I forged a deep connection with visual art at an early age while growing up in Gallatin, TN.  I have always drawn and created. Notes from classes, and later, meetings are covered in doodles. These doodles laid the foundation for my penchant for mark-making, which in college, became borderline obsessive. After college at Sewanee, I moved to Nashville to begin my teaching and art careers. 

 

As a teacher of art and art history, I have been exposed to countless artists, from history and my students alike. Being surrounded by these artistic legacies seeps into my own artistic fiber. My painting has absorbed elements of the  Symbolists, Surrealism, Disrupted realism, Shan Shui painting, and German Expressionism. 

 

After years of drawing, I returned to oil painting a few years ago. Those years of drawing have informed my painting as I explore themes pertaining to human endeavor, and histories both personal and universal. My brushwork is calligraphic in its most basic nature. 

I go back and forth in a tenuous dance between order and spontaneity in my works in order to live in the space between.