Tell me a little bit about how you first got into creating art.
I first had my first art class at age 7 from a neighbor offering an art course in her home for adults and of course I was the only child. Believe it or not, my first art picture was made on canvas and with oil paint and that first painting at age 7 won a $50.00 oil painting set in Chicago. I continued taking art classes then at The Art Institute of Chicago where I began drawing from nude models at age 11. In high school at the University of Chicago High, I was allowed to leave my high school classes to work in the college art classes life drawing classes (as I had taken every art course offered in high school).
Color is emotion, and I create emotional art thus color is extremely important to my work
What artists or movements have had an impact on you?
Obviously Abstract Expressionist, and Outsider art movements had the greatest impact on me within the last ten years, when after completing my MFA graduate degree and then my PHD research work at Monash Uni In Australia, my work drastically changed from realistic imagery to Abstract and Conceptual work about ideas. The emotionality and rawness in these art movements resonate with me, stirred me, made me want to create.
My goals for the future are to make important art
What themes does your work involve?
My work is informed by stories about people who suffer from trauma with a focus on their survival and their strength in living afterward. I choose stories which “give me that lump in my throat “ if you will, and thus make me want to paint… in the hopes that my art, when viewed will help heal those who have suffered. Catharsis! (Catharsis is from the Ancient Greek word κάθαρσις, Katharsis, meaning "purification" or "cleansing".).
What is important to you about the visual experiences you create?
My art process is important to me as I create. Art has been a part of my life for so long that I do not even think about it, it is who I am and what I do, simply.
What is the significance of medium and colour?
Color is emotion, and I create emotional art thus color is extremely important to my work. I incorporate many different media into my pictures, and it is exciting to be able to use these tools to enhance my pictures. I use sand, string, discarded drawings and torn old canvases, oil sticks, oil paint, acrylic paint. Anything I find I use I am a collector of discarded things.
Do you work from memory, life, photographs, or from other resources? Describe your creative process.
My work begins with the words which come from my books. Words are written all over my books, they are circled and underlined and written large and small and in color. They are what drives me, and they are the titles of my works. They are the beginnings for me.
Do you have any artistic goals for the future that you would like to share?
I have created a 60’ mural for a city in Texas, it was chosen from 100 entries and the first time an abstract art was created and chosen for the entrance of the city of San Marcos, a Texas city. This was a very exciting opportunity so that people could see an artwork for “art’s sake” and not have to go to an art museum to see this. The University of Central Oklahoma chose five of my artworks to re-create into costumes for a play informed by the “Me Too Movement” and this was a very exciting opportunity for me. Recently I have won a first prize award at The Koch Brothers Mark Arts Gallery in Wichita with a very nice monetary award and my work published on the invites, posters. I have been lucky to live and make art in some wonderful fairytale places: Venice, Italy (when I was working on a Masters through NYU), Salzburg, Austria (when in undergraduate art college), Australia (when working on a Ph.D. in art), Costa Rica (PhD art fellowship), most recently teaching art on the island of Saipan. My goals for the future are to make important art.
