Paintings andDrawings

My first validation for making art was when I was 3 years old. I loved watching Romper Room with the hostess Miss Lois. At the end of the show she always looked through her “magic mirror” at her viewers and asked them to send in drawings of specific things. I loved doing this! My older sisters would help me mail the drawings and Miss Lois would send me postcards of her on the set of Romper Room. I still have these images today. This experience got me making making art and I never stopped. As an undergraduate at the University of Illinois, I studied Art History – then I took a painting class. The result was a double major and subsequent graduate work at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. I’ve been a professional artist for over 30 years and still find new things to learn. I live and work in Kalamazoo, MI with my husband, son, our border collie Lucky, and our cat JoJo.

My work uses patterns to vividly represent human emotions and experience, and to convey not just beauty but tension. As the world has changed these last few months, the patterns of my life have changed (anthropologist Jane Guyer has dubbed it an “enforced present”). I’m not alone in this. My daily dog-walks have become a pattern for survival, and I’ve come to see that my neighbors — walking their dogs, jogging, biking — have their own survival patterns. With this, my work is changing. Old patterns are being destroyed, and new patterns are beginning to emerge. I'm working on a new body of work that is about our shared moment in American history, our creative resilience, and transformative struggles.

My work can be see in person at Addington Gallery in Chicago, Illinois.