Artist Statement

I am a contemporary mixed-media artist based in Santa Cruz, California. For more than twenty years, my creative life has moved between Santa Cruz and Santa Fe, New Mexico. My work brings together printmaking, painting, archival photography, drawing, image transfer, and collage. Through layering, alteration, and revision, I create works on paper and panel that move between memory, imagination, and transformation.

My current series, Spirit Animals, features whimsical yet iconic hybrid figures—animal heads joined with human bodies. Influenced by Egyptian iconography, ceremonial dress, and the expressive presence of animals, these figures suggest a deep interconnectedness among humans, animals, and the natural world. I think of them as guides: beings that inhabit a threshold between worlds and may accompany us into what lies beyond.

Each work begins with a drawing in my sketchbook. I then select an archival photograph that has an intuitive connection to the emerging figure. Drawing directly onto the photograph, I build the surface with paint, collage, and image transfer, alternately concealing and revealing the original image as the work develops. I return repeatedly to drawing, allowing the figure, its history, and its symbolic meaning to evolve through the process.

The resulting works combine the personal histories embedded in photographs with imagined identities and symbolic presence. They invite viewers to consider kinship, mystery, and the enduring relationship among human life, animal life, and the earth.

Short Biography

A former graphic designer, I began working in printmaking and painting in 1987. I studied painting at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1995 to 1997, and have continued my education through printmaking, drawing, and painting workshops both locally and abroad.

My work has been included in regional and national juried exhibitions. I am a juried member of the California Society of Printmakers. My work may be viewed by appointment at my Santa Cruz studio and is represented by Gallery 125 in Santa Cruz, California.

I live in Santa Cruz with my husband, Rick, and our two cats. Outside the studio, I enjoy golf, kayaking, hiking, reading, cooking, and spending time with family. I am a fifth-generation Californian.