About Me

I am an encaustic painter, originally from Bucks County, PA and now living and working in Ann Arbor, MI. I create encaustic works that move intuitively from pale, translucent spaces to bold, vibrant colors that shout! With the painting directing me, each piece is a new adventure in colors, textures and story-telling.

I love imagining the structure of my life as a story told in bold colors, restful negative spaces, and positive interactions between the two. I believe we all have these strong interactions and connections to each other, to our ancestors, to this planet, and on through to the Universe. It’s that connection of how we are everything, and how everything is us, that excites my imagination.

I’m inspired by my genealogical research that uncovered at least seven generations of creatives in my lineage. Writers, illustrators, fine artists, and inventors are recorded back though my ancestral lines. I love the notion of connecting my art today to the generations of talent that run through my DNA. I feel intimately connected to the stories of those who came before me.

I’m always excited to start my day with a blank panel on my studio table. I love to begin my mornings by throwing some crazy abstract watercolor images onto the panel, then making marks that just come out from nowhere. I’ll use pens, pencils, pastels, or anything mark-making tool within my reach. There is not usually any meaning in those initial marks but it gets my hands and arms in motion ready for the next steps – the application of several delicious layers of hot, clear encaustic wax. I then apply layers of beautiful pigmented encaustic colors into more structured shapes. I utilize encaustic wax, pan pastels, oil paint, lacquer, shellac and inks in my compositions. And then – more often than not – I find myself joyfully covering over everything that I just spent hours of creating, with a coat of white paint!

THEN I really begin to develop the final painting. As I add wax and fire to the composition, all the under-layers begin to mysteriously rise towards the top. The work advances by adding more color and more heat to the top layers and scraping away down through the layers to the original watercolor work. The final painting is a mysterious composition of the here and now, and what was in the distant past.

I hope you enjoy discovering my work. It is displayed in private and institutional collections across the country. If you are interested in further conversations please contact me. I’d love to connect.

Thank you for visiting my site! To view my work in person contact me to schedule a studio visit. I’d love to show you more!