I was born in Boston but grew up in St. Louis.  I started drawing before I started school.  I remember sitting in my front yard coloring "Prince Valiant" comics when I was three or four, before I could even read them.  Horses were a major theme in my early work.   I spent hours drawing, even when I was supposed to be taking notes at school.

One of my favorite field trips was going downtown to the St. Louis Art Museum.  I would stare at the paintings, trying to figure out how they turned brush strokes into pictures that seemed almost alive when viewed from a distance. My favorite "old masters" were Van Gogh, Monet, Rembrandt, Wyeth and Winslow Homer.

In high school, I took every art class offered.  I always assumed I would continue to study art in college, so it was somewhat of a surprise, even to me, when I decided instead to major in Wildlife Biology and Botany at the University of Montana.                                                              

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After graduation, my forester husband, Ed, and I ended up working outdoors at Priest Lake in resource management.  I spent some of my spare time drawing and painting, and I began selling pen & ink note cards of the surrounding scenery and other subjects.

Eight years and one child later, we moved to Sandpoint, where our second child was born.  Drawing and painting time was somewhat limited during this period, but I still worked at improving my watercolor technique.

I love woods and mountains, but I also find the ocean and seashore mesmerizing. As a teenager I read all of the "Horatio Hornblower" books and developed an interest in sailing.  At seventeen I had a chance to attend a summer sailing camp at Mystic, Connecticut, and learned various seamanship skills.  I still sail on the lake and visit the ocean whenever possible.

My goal in art is to create for the viewer a feeling of truly escaping into the breeze and sunshine for a little while.

A Van Gogh style painting done when I was 15 or 16