Artist Statement

Creative Threads

There are things we understand through words.
And there are things we understand through color.
I have spent my life moving between the two.

For as long as I can remember, I have been drawn to the places where ideas, images, and words come together.

My artistic journey began in theater; with sets, costumes, lighting, makeup, and the transformation of empty space into another world. Painting grew from that same impulse: to create something that did not exist before and to see where color, pattern, light, and energy might lead.

I paint as a colorist. I am drawn to the freedom of abstraction and to the possibility that a painting can speak before it is understood.

My paintings have been included in juried shows, solo and group exhibitions, and art fairs. They are currently in collections in Houston, Austin, Dallas, Boston, and various cities in Missouri and Kansas.

As a colorist, I work intuitively, allowing a painting to develop through energy, emotion, and experimentation. I hope each work creates a personal experience for the viewer rather than offering a single prescribed meaning.

Writing has been another constant throughout my life, and it is another essential part of my creativity. I have been published extensively over the years in professional journals and written/edited three books on nonprofit topics. That side of me still shows up in regular posts on LinkedIn.

In essays, I explore the experiences, contradictions, observations, and questions that shape a life. In poetry, I look for the moments when a few carefully chosen words can hold something much larger: longing, memory, humor, loss, wonder, desire, or recognition.

A painting may begin with a color.

A poem may begin with a single word.

An essay may begin with a question that refuses to go away.

For many years, I kept the artist in me tucked away beneath the practical demands of work and life.

But creativity does not disappear simply because we stop making room for it.

Eventually, it asks to come home.

This is a place to display the work that emerges for me when words are not enough and when they are exactly what is needed.