I was born in West Palm Beach, Florida in 1957 but didn’t spend a whole lot of time there. I was born into an Air Force family and we moved progressively further west across the country ending up in southern California by the time I was 13. A lot of years were spent along the coast, from LA to Santa Cruz to San Francisco; 9 years in SF, then up to the Sierra Nevada foothills in 1989.

In high school I discovered drama and dance, undoubtedly to try to overcome acute shyness (wasn’t a real successful endeavor but it was great anyway), then there was singing and then more theatre and contact improvisation in college (some progress here with the whole shyness thing.) Writing too, prose, poetry – mostly ‘thoughts while living’. The desire to paint grew over the years and stayed strong until in 2003 I at last began laying paint to canvas. Whew. Finally something that opened me up and I was able to stay there. I gave up shyness as a way of life and accepted it as just a small part of my character and got on with it.

A quote from one of Mary Oliver’s poems really says it all:

“One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began.”
- from The Journey

Thank you Mary.

I paint because I’m compelled to express myself and the world I experience.

Every painting presents the question, how do I paint what I see? I find more and more that any ideas I have when I start are usually best put aside. My mind will probably never know beforehand what will happen in a painting; at best the ideas form a loose framework. It's a constant dance of intent and letting the mystery unfold. Usually it's the mystery, not knowing how this stroke, this line or this color will turn out but forging ahead anyway, that proves to be most intriguing and also hardest to do. My favorite paintings happen when I can let that mystery take the lead.

And also, it tickles me no end. I love doing it, and I don’t know why beyond that it makes me feel really really really great. And when someone likes a painting, it’s icing on the cake. And I like cake too.

I live on 12 wonderful acres where I indulge my other favorite pastime of   generally appreciating and exploring Life.

Why BlackLionArt?