About me

I am a painter working primarily in chalk pastels and acrylics to investigate dramatic light and color relationships in coastal Maine landscapes. My current work uses familiar subjects—sky reflections, fractured water patterns, seasonal vegetation—as foundations for exploring how color and compositional structure can create visual energy independent of literal representation.

Rather than depicting landscape scenes directly, I organize compositions through explosive bursts of color and geometric relationships that emerge from observed natural phenomena. Working primarily from photographs that I manipulate and edit in the studio, I develop these formal relationships where I can control variables of light and weather, pushing beyond direct representation toward color-focused interpretations that maintain connection to the observed world.

My approach prioritizes compositional structure through dramatic contrasts and pattern relationships over conventional landscape description. I am particularly drawn to moments where natural elements—reflected sky, overlapping branches, seasonal color changes—create complex visual networks that can support both landscape recognition and abstract formal investigation.

Since relocating to Maine in 2022, the specific quality of northern coastal light has informed this direction, offering opportunities to explore how environmental observation can serve contemporary formal concerns while respecting traditional representational painting methods.

I received my BFA in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1984 and my MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2002. For over twenty years, I taught painting and drawing at private art schools and served as Associate Professor of Fine Arts at the New England Institute of Art in Brookline, MA for ten years. From 2007 to 2016, I pursued farming with my husband, working full-time from 2011 to 2016, an experience that deepened my understanding of seasonal rhythms and the relationship between human activity and landscape—influences that continue to inform my current studio investigations.