I consider myself primarily a landscape painter. Growing up in Ohio, I had brave parents who thought nothing of piling four young kids in the car for long road trips. I quickly learned how to tune out the chaos in the car by focusing on the scenery whizzing by.
When we moved to upstate New York, and later Virginia, I tagged along with my mother (a lifelong painter) to estate auctions. I was fascinated by the local folk art, with its stoicism and odd perspectives; its elevation of the mundane to the mythic. I decided to try creating one of these strange paintings myself. I sold it, and this somehow convinced me that I could become a painter.
Over the years, I've come to approach painting as an act of creating my own version, my own myth if you will. There is often a contemplative stillness and focus to my subjects. My process involves building up the surface of a painting with oil ground, followed by layers of oil paint mixed with cold wax. These layers, in turn, are rubbed or scraped, revealing underlying colors and creating subtle surface variations.
After earning a degree in art history with a minor in studio art from Swarthmore College, I had a vague notion that I would go on to study art restoration and work in a museum. But the need to pay off student loans intervened, and I ended up on another path. In the back of my mind, there was always a singular goal: to eventually live by the sea and paint full-time. And finally, here we are.