About
Artist Statement
Color
Color is powerful. I'm drawn to patterns that push light, life, and movement into my work. I glaze in multiple layers to intensify and saturate my subjects, working from a limited palette that I mix both on and off it. My subjects vary and my styles vary. My color is the constant. It's what marks a painting as mine.
Subject
Walk outside and look closely at anything. There are patterns everywhere: the spiral of a pine cone, the unfurling of a fern frond, the larger rhythms of mountains and trees. I paint those details. When I want a change of vista I go bigger: sky, the shapes and shadows of trees, a coming storm, the human figure.
Intent
My inspiration is afternoon light sparking in a stream, new leaves lit from behind, the peaks that surround my home. I'm not documenting them; I'm intensifying them. Whether a piece lands in realism, impressionism, or something more whimsical, I'm after the same thing. I want to remind you that this is a beautiful world to be living in.
Biography
I grew up in northern Utah, in a family where making pictures was ordinary. My mother painted and my father photographed. I started painting as a child. I spent a lot of time outdoors, and a lifelong pull toward plants and flowers turned into early work in gardens, greenhouses, and landscaping.
I set painting down for other studies and began a career in software, until a college art class brought it back. I started again with abstracts, and while showing them at a local gallery stroll I met the artist and educator Sydney Bowman and became her student. She took me back to fundamentals: drawing, painting, portraiture. From there I worked forward through a widening range of media before coming around again to oils.
I still work in technology and I still paint. The two have never pulled against each other. In many ways I view technology as another medium. The habits are the same either way: find the pattern, build in deliberate layers, keep the palette small enough to control.
I live and work in Holladay, Utah.
Selected Exhibitions
- 2024 Avenues Open Studios, Salt Lake City
- 2016 Art in Pilar's Garden, Pilar Pobil Legacy Foundation, Salt Lake City — the annual summer show hosted by the late Salt Lake painter Pilar Pobil
- 2016 Solo Show, Art270, Salt Lake City — debut of The Exploration of Solitude
Most of my work is in private collections.