Hmmm....I just love writing my own bio. It's a necessary exersize in umm... akwardness. But I will do my best to give you a sense of where I'm coming from. Or I suppose in the case of a bio... where I have been.

I have had a passion for collage since I was a kid. I cut up words and magazines for comfort. And the tradition lasted as I got older. I turned to sketchbooks and journals as early as third grade for that morsel for expression that magically seems to balance things again. I don't know why cutting things apart to reassemble them has made the world right side up for me- but at times it has literally done just that.
I have a little training in fine arts (I attended some programs at Otis Parson's in Los Angeles and Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle.) But most of what I create now has been a necessary process of exploration in mixed media and art journaling over the years that developed mainly out of creative isolation. (Having to figure out new materials, sizes and techniques is a wonderful way to develop your own style. )

After many years of keeping art journals my mother and I decided to launch an arts business in the stationery industry. Translating original artwork into digital renderings for greeting cards. Our company was named PaPaYa! and off we went. PaPaYa! is now thriving with artwork flowing into seven countries and thousands of retailers internationally. It has been an incredibly wonderful way for me to express myself as an artist. A great bridge for me between my creative life and my mundane life. I have been able to remain creatively free and self directed using the same formulas that kept me company years ago on the couch with only a journal, a cup of tea and some paint to overcome a stressful day.

Overtime I have fallen in love with digital arts and see it as a the ultimate tool. Today much of what I create at PaPaYa! is digital or a combination. I love this balance. When I burn out with digital artwork I play with my hand work. And vice versa.

Thanks to events like Artfest I have had the pleasure to share and expand my skills both in teaching and creating. Teaching has helped me to define my process and taught me to lean on my own creative faith. As a teacher I tend to focus on overcoming creative resitance by tricking the mind to keep quiet, moving impulsively and in my case, working large. I am not a big techniques instructor. My methods are generally very simple and easy to apply. My work both as a teacher and an artist is unrefined and impulsive- but effective. Armed with creative optomism I have given workshops to hundreds of students in my first few years as an instructor.

(Thus far) I do not sell original artwork or entertain gallery events. (Though I would if I ever changed my mind- so don't hold me to it.) As much as I believe in the arts on this level it has never felt like the right forum for me. No mater how large my pieces are (and my new wallpaper panels are six feet!) they just feel like they are personal and raw. Not the stuff for collectors and galleries.

To me the beauty of so much of the mixed media and journal arts movement is the personal quality of it. How it is often born out of necessity in ones life and continues through a series of impulses, triumphs and challenges. My own artwork is gritty and often unripe. And I like it this way. I like that what I want to do feels just out of reach. That there isn't a pressure to preform and yet there is great satisfaction in the making of things...and the sharing of things. I guess that's my own little irony. I try very hard to create artwork for myself and nothing more. And when I succeed in getting out of my own way- I share it with the rest of the world. That's my formula.

For more information about workshops and retreats see the links to the left.