About Me

I paint things that make me happy – things that my inner child is delighted to find out exist in the world. I was (and am) kind of a weird kid though, meaning I’m enthusiastic about bright red roses, happy little songbirds, and also vultures and spiders. I often focus on small details that aren’t ordinarily visible in everyday experience or that we could see if our attention were engaged differently. When it comes to non-objective art I like to contemplate how those little details relate to The Big Picture, and how both those things turn into abstract patterns the closer you get to them, whether in our human perception or in their own fundamental, mysterious natures. I like combining patterns and realistic representation because that’s what I feel (reality is) like.


While it’s true that I loved to draw and make things since I was a small child, I was also not great at handling being evaluated on subjective criteria. For a long time I stuck to making useful things because no one would tell me I wasn’t allowed to solve a problem. Are you cold? I have yarn – now it’s a hat – problem solved. At a certain point I realized the world probably does not need me to make more sweaters and blankets and I am allowed to exist without being utilitarian. Everyone is – I just had to realize that applied to me, too. 

I am someone who lives with multiple health conditions which make me easily fatigued and then easily frustrated that I’m not making more paintings. The flip side of that is any day I wake up and I can see and walk and hold a paintbrush is a relatively good day. 
I live in Franklin County, Tennessee and work out of my studio at the Cowan Center for the Arts. I’m originally from Huntsville, Alabama (a city where most of the residents are surprised to learn that anyone is originally from there). 

I studied linguistics until I dropped out of Swarthmore College due to burnout from unrecognized neurodivergence (because that wasn’t a thing in the 1990s/early 2000s) and related inappropriate medical care. I moved back to Huntsville where I got something better than a degree – my wonderful supportive husband Robert. But yes, I also did get a degree in English from the University of Alabama at Huntsville.