ABOUT ME

I worked as a studio potter for 20 years, producing functional and sculptural stoneware. I exhibited nationally, coordinated and led craft and mythology tours to Japan and Greece. I also led workshops nationally and founded the Connecticut Clay Artists Association. 

For the next 20 years, I had been drawing, painting, sculpting and teaching art at New Canaan High School. I was awarded “Teacher of the Year” by the CT Art Education Association and I am a National Board Certified Teacher. 

Since 2000, I have been co-leading Art and Yoga retreats in Madison, CT., and Tuscany, Italy. In 2006 I retired from high school teaching and established a painting studio in Winsted, CT. I currently work in watercolor, collage, encaustics and oil painting and offer private and group art classes at my studio at Whiting Mills in Winsted, CT.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I have been exploring encaustic painting over the past ten years.  I work in a variety of media and in this work I am incorporating my love for drawing, painting, collaging and composing visual stories.  I am using a painterly approach to combine drawings, pieces of found images, photographs and textured papers in a narrative style.  The encaustic wax medium allows me to work in layers, trapping fragments of color, memory and message in time.  

The content of my imagery expresses a life-long fascination with mythology, symbols and the cultures of ancient civilizations.  Travel, History, Music, Spirituality and the exploration of personal Mythology are the inspirations for my images.  

I begin with a pigmented wax painting to seal the substrata.  Layers of collage materials, including ephemera gathered in travel or papers I have painted are composed between wax layers and fused into the surface of the developing piece.  For the final layer, I use xeroxed copies of my sketches or photographs and burnish the ink into the surface of the waxed collage, dissolving the paper to leave the image embedded in the wax.  This process allows me to create the illusion of depth and mystery as images float over each other in transparent veils of color.