As a professional musician and emerging visual artist, I appreciate how the arts are linked through shared components of structure and form, rhythm and movement, color and shape, surprise and mystery. While music and dance are transitory forms, fleeting, in the moment, the visual arts allow the eye to indulge, study, explore and re-visit. My chosen form, that of abstract paintings, adds unending creativity. I enjoy seeing things develop as I work, playing with ideas and materials, and not having pre-conceptions about what the end result will be. My paintings are influenced by nature and I love to incorporate natural materials. Inspirations come both from my home setting under towering firs in southwest Portland and from frequent travels in the western United States.

 

Biography

I grew up on an Ohio farm and have spent most of my life in Colorado and the Pacific Northwest. All three locations have had a profound influence on how I see and conceptualize.

My profession has been one of teaching and performing music. As a pianist and harpsichordist, I have lived in the world of sound. Having taught at Reed College for thirty years and directed the Reed College Private Music Instruction program for nearly twenty-five years, I have been interested in music/ visual art collaborations and presented several concerts in the Cooley Gallery to add an aural component for the viewers. (Examples include: "Music from the Time of Rembrandt" and "Feast the Ear, Fool the Ear" in conjunction with a trompe l ’oeil exhibition "Feast the Eye, Fool the Eye".) Recent exhibitions include Art Off the Clock (Reed College) and Artists Among Us (Trinity Episcopal Cathedral).

While my art medium is mostly acrylic, I often add touches of pastels, and use print blocks and organic materials such as sand, petals and twigs in my abstract paintings. I am grateful to Hugh Donnelly, who was instrumental in helping me to really see and plunge headlong into the world of figurative drawing; Eric Wiegardt for brush technique with watercolors; Sharon Geraci, whose endless resources for collage inspired me to experiment with materials; and to Collin Murphy, a continuing mentor and guide, who has encouraged me to experiment and find my own artistic voice in my paintings.