I paint to catch the moment something becomes alive: a feeling in the body before it has a name. Goosebumps from a particular quality of light. A scent that unlocks a memory. A piece of music that lands somewhere words can't reach. That is where a painting starts.

The process itself is a dialogue. I move through chaos, into a kind of argument with the canvas, until something settles into quiet certainty. I don't always know what a piece is about while I am making it. Understanding tends to arrive afterward, in reflection, like a puzzle revealing itself piece by piece.

Using acrylic mixed media, along with oil, I build each painting in layers: translucent washes, blended color, texture, and sometimes found objects, until the surface holds something that resonates past the visual. I call this abstract simplification, stripping a feeling down until only its essential shape remains, strong and soaring.

My foundation is classical. I studied at Kendall College of Art and Design, earning a BFA in Fine Arts, and continued at the graduate level at Western Michigan University and Pasadena College of Art and Design under Mary Winterfield, who trained at the Art Students League of New York and under Henry Hensche at the Cape School. From Winterfield I learned Hans Hofmann's spatial push-pull theories and the color-key tradition for painting the color of light itself. That training is the architecture beneath everything I make. What I build on top of it is my own.

I came to painting full-time later in life, after years of holding multiple careers at once. Stepping fully into this work, both feet in, has been its own kind of quiet certainty.