ARTIST BIO

My art studies began with painting, illustration, textile design, and media arts at FIT and School of Visual Arts, which followed into the fast-paced world of New York City fashion as a designer and art director. In 2000, I traded in the concrete jungle for the lush rural landscapes of Naples, Florida. My family and I grew to love Florida’s unique sense of place and life on our small farm. The rich natural surroundings and slower pace of rural life brought new creativity and artistic expression to explore as a graphic designer, media artist, painter, sculptor, and printmaker.

I continued to evolve artistically during the pandemic to earn a BA in Studio Arts. The time spent social distancing and immersion outdoors allowed abundant time to study en plein air, the diversity of native trees, unique plants, and dappled sunlight over time. The studies reignited my artistic spirit and led to a series of works and exhibitions where I explored mark-making in contemporary-style sous-bois landscape paintings, monotypes, and sculptures.

ARTIST STATEMENT

My connection with nature started when I was young. The forest has always been my sanctuary, my place to slow down and appreciate the beauty surrounding me. Even today, nature offers me serenity, solace, and healing. I hope my art can reconnect the viewer to that sense of childlike awe and collective bonding to nature’s physical, mental, and spiritual riches of light and connectivity.

It was important for me to delve into the vibrant energy and interconnected life beneath Florida’s trees to capture the spirit of the place, its textures, colors, and the myriad life that thrives under the dappled sunlight. The lichen, ball moss, Spanish moss, bird nests, and epiphytes form symbiotic relationships for survival on Live Oak, Florida Maple, and Bald Cypress. These native trees offer lessons from millions of years of ancient wisdom carried in their roots and seeds for sustainability.

Inspired by 19th-century Fontainebleau painters, I adopted a sous-bois perspective, focusing on the details of natural textures and colors found in the diverse life in the undergrowth of Southwest Florida’s native trees. My subjects are nature vignettes inspired by traditional landscapes up close and personal. The contemporary large-scale monotypes, plaster sculptures, and paintings use mark-making tools and layers of additive and reductive color to create textures that vibrate between impressionism and abstractionism, forming a symbiotic relationship with the past and present.

The works are a journey beneath the undergrowth where viewers can experience the magnificent dance of light and where I also find energy and hope.