Artist Statement

For as long as I can remember, I have felt a deep and abiding connection with the path of the artist. (This despite the fact that I could not draw a realistic image to save my life.) My childhood heroes were explorers and pioneers, poets and writers, and especially, the nineteenth-century Parisian Impressionists. These innovators rejected officially sanctioned ways, left familiar places, and journeyed into uncharted territory—whether that territory was physical or metaphysical. Growing up in the sixties, I struggled to find a way to express a deeply felt creative and spiritual longing.

After immersing myself in the philosophies that fueled the Impressionist and Abstract Expressionist movements, I felt inspired to finally take the plunge into art-making. In my early thirties I began a series of soul portraits. Working from live models, I was never interested in realistically reproducing form as much as blending the creamy soft pastel to depict the essence of the unseen.