I consider myself a plein air painter.  I paint outdoors, in front of and in emotional response to the landscape.  I visit a site often, at various times of the day and in various weather conditions and work quickly, usually completing one small “alla prima” painting per session.  I paint as a way to explore and become intimate with a place and to better understand the visual and environmental phenomena surrounding it.  Through the act of painting I’m trying to understand the fundamental characteristics, the very essence, of the land that I call home.
 
In the summer, between landscape sessions, I load my painting gear into an old Econoline camper van and head out to paint rural carnivals. I camp in the parking lot with the carnival folks and spend the days - and the nights – painting. These paintings straddle the line between landscape and still life and are the very essence of how I view and enjoy the visual world. Color, shape and value, in their exquisite subtleties, are tightly and geometrically related to each other in found, unarranged objects. Plus, it’s just plain fun to paint in the midst of all that colorful chaos, surrounded by happy crowds and the smell of popcorn and cotton candy.
 
I am a full-time professional artist. I live with my husband Lee, who is a blacksmith and sculptor, on a working homestead on the sunny south slope of Big House Mountain in Rockbridge County, Virginia.