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I was born in 1953 and raised in rural Oklahoma, influenced by being outside with nature and animals as my dad raised cattle.
Indoors, my grandmother and mother sewed and canned so there were always beautiful colors
and textures and projects and very little television. Although my earliest training was in music I
couldn't leave art supplies alone and drew when I was supposed to be doing other things. My grandmother
ordered oil paint from the Sears catalog for me when I was about eight, and
it was a lifechanging moment. I majored in art at the University of Tulsa and earned a Master's in painting but had to teach to survive. Meanwhile, I painted whenever possible. Some encouraging words were spoken , I won a few local awards and was accepted into some juried shows and galleries. Then in 2000, life sort of blew up and when the dust settled, twenty years' worth of work was gone, I was recovering from cancer in a new town, and people near to me were gone. I gardened obsessively for a couple of years, which was rewarding, but then remembered I was a painter and stopped putting all my creative energy into shovels. I began reteaching myself about how to paint and why I paint. The work is still evolving. Hence the new work on this website, as I recreate my self. I travel back and forth between Claremore, Oklahoma and northern New Mexico. I hope the viewer can experience why I paint each painting -- what it was like to be there, whether it was the light that morning or the color of a shawl or the smell of the grass that made it important to paint this record at this time. Thank you for looking at the pictures. I hope you find something that strikes a chord within. |