Artist Statement

I am an elementary art teacher and freelance artist living in Ellicott City. My students’ enthusiasm for the natural world has helped to revitalize my own. Typically, I draw inspiration from photographs I’ve taken at various parks, refuges, gardens, and zoos. When I paint, I am striving to capture the unique personality of each creature; some are beautiful, some are strange, and some are beautifully strange. Many artists choose to anthropomorphize animals, but I most enjoy the peculiarities that make them so distinct from humans. In the last five years I’ve become an impassioned birdwatcher, and my painting has shifted to reflect that focus.

I have two distinct bodies of work: acrylics on panels or canvas, and gouache with ink details on paper. My acrylics are more traditional and feature fully developed backgrounds with looser brush strokes. The gouache and ink paintings are sparser and illustrate jokes and pop culture references. I’ve also branched into ink drawings and digital illustration. In any mode, my aim is to be bold and gutsy as an artist- in brushwork, composition, texture, and color. I am a very joyful person, so I hope to create joyful art.