Artist Statement

From early childhood, through puberty & the raising of my children, to this present day, creating art gives me a freedom that nothing else can. When I work with pencil, glass cutter, camera, or any of my other favorite medium, I escape to a place of no boundaries, no real “set rules” and nothing but my imagination to guide me. It is when I am engulfed in an art project that my mind is most clear and I am able to focus, to observe; I can better understand my own connection with our world. There has been a grand sense of personal achievement, self-realization & self-discovery involved throughout my life artistically as I evolved from finger painting my bedroom walls to redesigning a multilingual lifestyle magazine, to creating avatar clothing, to capturing newborn babies at their most tender moments, and so much more.

My inspiration usually comes from one of two things: children and/or nature. As a mother of four, and grandmother of four, I find such pleasure in watching children observe and explore their world; they do it with such awe and exhilaration, I can't help but become ecstatic while capturing it all on camera! It takes me back to my own childhood with my own inner thoughts and wonderment, and it reminds me how life changes the way we look at our environment, society, and the world around us. It helps me to remember to appreciate the little things. When I step out of our paved paradise and into a forest or on to a nature trail, I almost immediately feel a sense of oneness with everything that surrounds me. I am no longer just a human being, instead I feel like a hybrid of sorts, intertwined with my own roots, leaves, and all else that comes along with that life. It is what I call “the simplicity.” When I use graphic design as my media of choice, I often spend time out in nature to free my mind of the daily clutter. By taking this one step prior to my computer design work, I find that my creations become much more clean and simplistic. I have learned that less is more in this aspect of art.

I find that much of my earlier photography work was generally zoomed in and cropped tight in order to create abstract images of everyday objects, however as I have grown older I have noticed a shift in how I photograph what I see. I do still enjoy the abstract look and closeness feel to those earlier photographs (and still do those shots), but I typically find myself creating more of a “gazing” ambience when photographing animals and people. Meaning that when I later look at my photographs, the subject matter is looking away from the camera and off into the unknown (out of the composition), and I am left wondering what they were gazing at. Creating my images in this way, and then later gazing at them myself, I find that my mind wanders to great lengths with imagination and recreating a story to go along with what they may have been watching.

Besides what I have already mentioned above, the greatest joy I take from creating my art is the conversations I hold within myself. It is my “Me” time. I multitask mentally, addressing and letting go of that which needs be, and inhaling the goodness from all around me. When I am alone, creating my art, I am free.