Beach Bay

I grew up in small dairy towns north of Seattle surrounded by nature and animals. It was pretty remote, before the internet and with little access to TV. A lot of my friends didn't have it at all. Writing, reading, music, sports, crafts, and hanging outside was what we did. I was gifted a Polariod camera one year and promptly put up a photograph on my bedroom door, proclaiming my new business as a photographer. My dad gifted me his old analog camera shortly afterward, I think I was about 10. My parents had a business doing patent drawings digitally that later developed into a graphic design business in the 90s. This was when very few people had computers and the tech industry in the city was just getting going. My mother always had horses and got into breeding Warmbloods. So often weekends were either spent doing chores and repairs around the house or on the road to shows, always with a camera in hand. I was a valedictorian at my high school and went to the liberal arts school Whitman College, not really sure what I wanted to do as a career. I studied Philosophy, but was always taking an art class (or two) each semester, just to keep me sane in the academia world. It wasn't until my junior year when I realized that art was it for me. Another year there and I would have double majored but I settled for just the art minor and the decision that pursuing art and making would become my lifelong focus. Through the years my work has taken many forms. It began as a way to educate myself more since I didn't go to art school. Drawing, photography, printmaking, graphic design, illustration, paper making, textile design are some of the mediums I've dappled with but painting is number one now. My process is personal and intuitive. Art and making are still incredibly grounding and painting is my favorite way to get clear on unconscious motives and feelings. It helps me to connect, and be present to innate knowledge that we all carry around within but may not be aware of. In doing so, my work can be raw, emotional and energetic yet also beautiful and contained. We are all of these things.