About the Artist
My art is the product of what my soul speaks to me – a creative force that wells up and yearns for expression in this world.
I am a self-taught artist who has studied under professional Ann Arbor artists Mark Schroll (painting) and Haley Alcock (stained glass mosaics). With their encouragement to experiment, and inspiration from the casual spirit of Fauvist painter Raoul Dufy and the color and composition of landscape artist Wolf Kahn, I have developed my own free style of expression.
I love to break all the rules and experiment with different methods and materials, such as squirting watercolor paint straight from the tube for an impasto effect, or using glitter paper and recycled fabrics as a part of the substrate under stained glass mosaics. Never content to limit myself to one medium, I experiment with mosaic fused glass, glass bead necklaces, hand painted ceramics, and whatever else my intuition whispers to try. I will try anything that allows freedom of expression through design and color, and what you see in my studio at any given time is representative of my love of learning and experimentation in art.
The abstract works in watercolor and mosaic are inspired by nature and travel. They capture the energy my mind’s eye feels as a I look at a scene, whether it’s a New Mexico desert, a Florida orchid garden, or a Michigan lake.
About the watercolors:
I most often paint watercolors on location, taking water, paint, and brushes in a small backpack, and setting up a canvas on a foldable camping table. I will paint in the wind, dust, rain, or whatever the environment throws at me. I wet all or some of the paper and lay down initial washes, add broad strokes of color, and often squirt paint straight from the tube to create an effect that imparts a sense of the solidity of the earth, trees, or man-made structures in the scene. I sometimes pour water over the paper to mimic rain washing away part of the terrain, or I smear and blot the paint with my fingers to achieve the shimmering, near-vibrating effect of heat rising off the land. As I paint, surrounded by nature, my interaction with the canvas – squirting, smearing, stroking, pouring, blotting, scratching – is a physically intuitive process that records the landscape as I feel it. The paintings become a personal travelogue of vivid moods of lands near and far.
All watercolor paintings are on acid-free paper with archival quality framing and UV glass.
About the mosaics:
I love to use shards of glass as is, without trying to cut them into any particular shape. I intuitively gather shapes and colors that seem to “feel right” and arrange and rearrange them on a wood substrate. I add more glass, and sometimes other materials such as beads, buttons, gemstones, cabochons, tile, stones, and found objects, moving them around until they serendipitously fit the mood. These pieces often feel as though they make themselves. Many of the mosaics were created to be viewed in two directions, revealing completely different images when rotated.
Stained glass mosaics are grouted, sealed, and finished on the sides and back.