BiographyI came to Tucson, AZ in 2018, originally from Michigan. My quest to be an artist began at age five and took shape in my high school years with a painting juried into the Michigan Wildlife Art Awards. This was subsequently published in Michigan Natural Resources Magazine in 1975. After earning a B.A. in Art Education from Michigan State University in 1979, single parenting and economic survival led me into the financial services industry in sales/sales management for decades after that. I continued my art practice throughout, attending Kendall College of Art and Design in 2000 and returning to painting full-time in 2021. The challenges I faced in those years were instrumental in shaping the passion in my artistic direction. My work is in private collections from Massachusetts to Arizona and corporate collections such as Ocala Eye Care and Mitsubishi International. Artist Statement"The purpose of art is to ask questions" -Lawrence Weiner My compositions spring from a fascination with language and its profound connection to the thoughts and emotions of the people I paint. I ask of the work, "Who is this person? What are they thinking? How did they get here?" As a contemporary figurative painter with a strong commitment to social justice, I continually delve into the narrative quality of the human form with primary attention to women, their aspirations, and their struggles. Working primarily in oil, I often begin with words, phrases, or stories and then invoke connecting imagery. A recent focus has been on polysemous words (spelled one way but with multiple meanings). For example, my painting entitled "Dish" can be viewed as an old-fashioned sexist term for a woman, a container for service, or an action verb (as we dish something up or dish about someone). Each meaning shapes the narrative of the piece.