A collection of abstract paintings created in oil and cold wax that reflect an ongoing fascination with layering, texture, and the tension between control and letting go.
View the CollectionOil & Cold Wax on Panel
I am an abstract artist with a multidisciplinary background that includes printmaking, painting, jewelry making, and photography. Originally from Rochester, New York, I am now a nearly forty-year resident of California. I earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Louisiana State University in 1981, specializing in printmaking. After college, I eventually moved to California where I raised my three children. Always looking for a creative outlet I began making one-of-a-kind pieces of jewelry which I sold at in-home trunk shows.
When I became an empty nester, I pivoted toward another medium of interest: painting. Though I had dabbled in watercolor and acrylics throughout my life, oil paint — and specifically plein air painting — became my new passion. Painting outdoors, responding to the landscape and light in real time, was both rewarding and challenging. I attended several workshops with award-winning plein air painters, including Frank Serrano, Kevin Courter, and Lynn Gertenbach.
After many years of painting plein air, I found myself increasingly drawn to a more abstract approach to the landscape. For me, it was a shift that offered more freedom from subject matter while remaining compositionally rigorous. I was introduced to oil and cold wax painting by Anne Hebebrand, an internationally recognized contemporary abstract painter and one of the most influential educators in the cold wax medium. Through ongoing workshops with Anne, she has remained a mentor to me, and her guidance continues to inform my exploration of this medium. In addition to Anne's in-person workshops, I have taken online courses with renown oil and cold wax artists Jerry McLaughlin and Rebecca Crowell, whose expertise and personal critiques have also helped to enrich my work.
The paintings I create today are built through many layers that are applied, scraped back, and rebuilt, allowing traces of earlier decisions to remain visible. I'm interested in surfaces that feel weathered and then layered with fresh shapes, sometimes overlapped with more texture or mark making. My color palette tends to evolve intuitively — sometimes restrained and earthy, other times more luminous and unexpected — guided less by rules and more by what feels emotionally right in the moment. One of the things I find most appealing about this medium is the final story — its language, that of color, form, and texture — and how it reveals itself when the push and pull of these elements come to rest.
