Hello – and welcome to my world, which centers around my passion and profession: art. As someone who has never been described as shy, boring or lazy, I keep my “finger in the pot” of what’s happening on Grand Junction’s arts and culture scene, and I’m so excited to start sharing it with you.

                     

As a graduate of the University of Wyoming (without honors, sigh, but with loads of experiences like traveling the rodeo circuit and leading backpacks through the Tetons) I headed off to the “big city” of Denver, where I jumped headfirst into the world of advertising and PR. After writing countless press releases and overseeing as many marketing campaigns, I decided “the real world” wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

 

So I sold everything I owned and ran away with a friend. Backpacking around the world. For a year. And that was where my love affair with art took root.

 

After meeting up with renowned contemporary realist Scott Fraser in Worpswede, Germany, we toured every art museum and architectural site we could find in Italy and Greece. (Not an easy task on $10 a day, I’ll tell you!) But the seed was planted and I was a goner for Gauguin and practically every other artist known to man. It was during this jaunt that I also fell madly in love with black-and-white photography, sending home roll after roll to develop when I returned to the U.S.

 

Back on American soil, I reverted to my previous lifestyle in marketing and opened an advertising and PR agency with two talented friends. But as I helped promote galleries, artists and the performing arts, my inner artist was screaming. Loudly. After six years, I knew it was time to “sing my own song,” which if you ask those who know me, they’d say it’s “Still Crazy After All These Years!”

 

After our second child was born, we moved to Grand Junction where my artistic flame was further fueled. The only darkroom I could find in 2002 to develop my black-and-white film closed down, but luckily I found an oil painting class at The Art Center and showed up with no knowledge and zero supplies. Oops. But the next week I brought supplies and my new career began.

 

Since then, painting has courted me with a vengeance! I now have a studio in Palisade, where I paint daily. It is my profession, my passion and my voice. And when you get a chance to see my work, you’ll see my personality is definitely encapsulated in my paintings. I show that work in several art galleries, including ones in Santa Fe, Taos, Evergreen, Denver and right here in the Grand Valley. 

 

I also belong to several local and national oil painting and encaustic (painting with wax) groups and organizations, but that’s not what you want to hear about. So let me just tell you that I’m obsessed about just about anything artistic here in the valley and belong to a close-knit family of artists, musicians and actors. We all help keep one another up-to-speed on what’s happening here culturally – and as I discover new things, you will too!