My Journey In Art

I’m one of those people who have been creating art their entire life. In childhood I preferred painting and drawing to playing tag outside on a sunny day. After a rainfall I would be in the mud making cups and bowls, then leave them to bake in the coming sun. So it was natural I studied art in college. My focus was on clay - hand building, not throwing.

A Career Is Born

At the end of my senior year in college I took a broadcast television class, taught by a local reporter. I learned about a new television medium (then!) - videotape. I wanted to learn more but there weren’t any courses offered and the entry cost to the equipment was prohibitive. So upon graduation I applied to my local tv stations to become a news cameraman and landed a weekend job as a teleprompter, which got my little toe in the back door. I picked up the skill set of visual storytelling by hanging out with the cameramen and editors and within a year was shooting and editing my own stories for the news. This path took me to San Francisco, via Portland, where I spent a good part of my career as a video journalist.

During my broadcast journalism career, I also received my Masters from JFK University in Arts and Consciousness.  

Life Throws a Curveball

Times change and a freakish work injury helped propel me into a whole new avenue of exploration via the internet. Along with my husband, we formed a company and gradually began producing our own stories that we distributed online. The show and blog we started in 2006, Cooking Up a Story, was one of the earliest internet-based television shows on food and sustainability and it allowed me to expand my creativity exponentially in a subject matter that I adore.

In the fall of 2015 I had a life-changing event that caused me to seriously reevaluate my current direction. 

Art, Front and Center—Again!

Looking back, I am very proud of the pioneering work I did on television - especially opening those early doors for women to enter the field normally associated for men - and also laying the groundwork for later creating an online television show. But the one thing I felt I hadn’t done was get back to my art. I kept thinking, I’ll do it later. I finally decided, that later is now. Since that Fall, I’ve been drawing, painting, and creating every single day. As an illustrator, you could say I am a late bloomer, but creating has always been at the core of what I do and who I am. Taking the beauty of everyday life and turning it into something that evokes joy. That’s what I really love to do. I look forward to my encore career getting back to clay and working as an illustrator and visual design artist.

If you’re interested in licensing, collaborating, or commissioning work, please email me.