I’ve always been an artist, obsessed with coloring as a child. In my 20s and 30s, while raising my son, portraits of children and pets led to commissions of more serious portraiture in pastel. Later a 25-year career as the home content editor at Romantic Homes, Country Home and Midwest Living magazines took time away from painting. But my magazine credentials, artistic talents and interior design expertise blended, leading to HGTV appearances, media trend interviews, trade show talks and, ultimately, being chosen as one of three judges for the highly rated 2011 Des Moines Art Festival. Along the way, while designing multiple magazine show homes and hundreds of room sets, I found, surprisingly, that most principles that apply to interior design also apply to compositional painting. Lessons in color, scale, balance, rhythm and more, in room design, prepared me for returning to painting in retirement.

I am mostly self-taught, but since retiring to Door County, I have augmented my skills in numerous classes with nationally known pastel artists at The Peninsula School of Art in Fish Creek. I was chosen as the Emerging Artist at the 2018 Sturgeon Bay Fine Arts Fair. I was a member of the Door County Art League, have been invited to exhibit in numerous shows at The Francis Hardy Center for the Arts in Ephraim (where I currently serve as a docent), have had pieces hung in several local restaurants, donate my work yearly to raise funds for local charities, and have had success in selling my art to numerous private collectors.

My paintings are rendered on archival sanded pastel paper intended to “grab” the small particles of pigment that make up each stick of colored pastel. Created with pure pigment mixed with just a little water and binder (nothing more) is why pastel paintings are so luminous, intensely colorful and why they never fade. It is also why pastel paintings must be kept under glass for protection.

As an artist living in Door County, I find unending inspiration in its shorelines, woods and pastoral back roads. I observe how sunlight and shadow affect a landscape and render it in a more intensely colorful way with my own artistic vision. I have stepped away from a pure representational style (as in earlier portraiture) into a slightly softer, impressionistic interpretation that the pastel medium is perfect for rendering. I tend to work quickly, and pastels offer an immediacy that suits me. Working the “magic” into each piece is what keeps me inspired as an artist.