WHY PAINT?

About twenty-five years ago, while experiencing a family crisis, a friend asked me to join her at the Museum School in Springfield, MA for a drawing class. Thus began my fascination and education with creating art. Painting was therapy: I loved the process, the pure focus it demanded. I discovered that my love of nature, shape, composition, color could be satisfied by exploration in paint. I was always interested in art, had taken many art history courses at George Washington University particularly drawn to the Impressionists. When I retired from a twenty-five-year career in real estate in Western MA and moved to the Vineyard, I was ready to convey the beauty of this island.

WHY PASTELS? ACRYLICS?

I am basically self-taught, experimented with different mediums and found that I loved the playfulness, immediacy of color, the mess, and free flowing of movement that I felt with pastels. I liken it to a dance, whether it be jazz, classical, or modern: to just let the colors, images, shapes come together. The mind’s eye controls the process.

I have explored acrylics, wanting my compositions to be less constricted by what we see and more of what we feel. This medium allows me to experiment with movement, texture, line, shape that working with a brush and paint can offer. I am enjoying this learning process and its challenges.

WHY SCAPES?

I am fortunate to live on Martha’s Vineyard and cannot help but find so much solace and peace in the ever present “scapes” around us. Beauty is everywhere and all I have to do is open my eyes, my ears, and even my sense of smell to be transported to a place of peace and gratefulness. I attempt to capture this wonder of nature in my art.