Bio
Bio
As far back as I can remember growing up in Baltimore, I drew constantly…on my parent’s walls and inside the drawers of their furniture. They encouraged me by painting my bedroom with chalkboard paint so that I could draw on the walls without damaging their suburban home. It’s a habit that remains with me to this day, I am always drawing the people around me.
Growing up with creative parents, creativity was encouraged. My parents made things. They were always refinishing or designing something. Mom was a teacher’s secretary for the Baltimore County School System, but in her heart, she was a jewelry designer. As a result. Most dinners were burnt to a crisp since she would start a meal and then get distracted with enameling and stringing beads. Dad was a commercial realtor who preferred to spend his time woodworking.
They were completely supportive when I began painting murals in their home, my high school and around the city and not surprised when I won a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to paint a mural in downtown Baltimore. That mural was painted during a public works strike. Proper scaffolding was not set up and so when I stepped back from a rickety ladder to view my progress without a safety bar behind me, I fell two stories and was saved by a pile of trash.
In High School painting and being creative became the most important part of my identity and I became driven to learn more. As a result, I was accepted into the most prestigious institution for painting and drawing in Baltimore, The Maryland Institute of Art (MICA). At MICA, I continued to paint murals in hospitals, universities, private homes, and businesses. My work expanded to include different types of materials and surfaces. I began to find my voice. In graduate school, I continued to paint murals in various buildings around the George Washington University campus and, also studied Museum Education. My mentor was Marcella Brenner, wife of painter Morris Louis.
While I was attending graduate school at GWU I moved into my first studio in the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria, Virginia, a 100-year-old munitions plant where torpedoes were made during World War I. It was converted into artist studios. I was balancing making art and working in the museum world.
My working life as an educator, a curator and a writer a small part of my creative energy. After graduate school, I married my college sweetheart and we moved to New York City, then Tulsa, Oklahoma, and then suburbs of Dallas and Houston following his airline industry career. Despite having joy in raising two children, I was living under a dark cloud. My husband at the time was not interested in my art career and worse was both verbally and physically abusive. I battled his demons to keep my children and myself safe from his destructive behavior. The effects unfortunately extended beyond mental and physical abuse but also greatly impacted my ability to produce art, to create and to even believe in myself. I felt lost, stifled and afraid.
It wasn’t until I found a way out of that abusive relationship and developed a new relationship with a supportive partner that I had the mental bandwidth to be creative again. When I remarried in 2000, to my current husband Paul, my spirit was renewed. He suggested that I make a list of ten things I wanted to do with my life; going back to painting was at the top of this list. Paul encouraged me to move forward and with the support of my instructors at the Glassell School of Art, I was accepted into a highly competitive master’s program in painting at New York University, which began in Venice one semester subsequently followed by two semesters in Manhattan.
This program opened doors in my practice as an artist and doors to the art world I previously had not been exposed to. I was able to understand how my practice could have value and be a part of larger sphere. Since that time, I’ve been extremely lucky in my painting career to have had work shown in numerous galleries in Houston and Sante Fe and have had work become part of permanent museum collections. `
Currently, I work from my studio in the Silos, an old Rice Factory in the Warehouse district of Houston and I teach studio art at the Glasscock School of Rice University. My husband and I are proud grandparents of three children and we own a poodle named Bogey who follows me everywhere.
