Colour and expressive line feature in my work. I generally work in series, developing a concept visually until the idea no longer compels me. In the making, I like to create a tension between open experimental mark-making and a refined deliberate responses to what was laid down, gradually becoming more responsive to the canvas. Much of my work is in one way or another inspired by prolonged observation of the natural world –colours and colour relationships, patterns and compositional structure, as well as textures and forms.I have been in my studio in the Trafalgar Building in downtown Guelph since 1997. During that time I have exhibited my work in solo and group shows across Canada. I have also developed interactive exhibitions where people can become involved in the creation of artworks, including Kiss Paintings whereby kiss marks are imprinted onto a canvas or topographical map before I return to my studio to paint in response to the pattern and design made by these marks.My work is part of the Canada Art Council’s Art Bank collection, and is in other private and corporate collections. I was the City of Guelph’s inaugural Artist in Residence (2014), and together with participants, created an artwork that is on permanent display in the City of Guelph at the West End Community Center. I have led workshops and programs in a number of public art galleries and curatorial agencies. Most recently, I co-curated Creative Dissent at the Art Gallery of Guelph (2023). I have participated in a number of residences, retreats and conferences including Banff Centre, Est-Nord-Est, Pouch Cove and Broken Forests 2022. I was the recipient of the Canadian Art Foundation’s Art Writing Prize in 2015; and have written a number of exhibition essays, and reviews for Memento, C-Magazine and Canadian Art magazine. I am currently sessional faculty in Visual Arts Department at Brock University and a member of the Throbbing Rose collective currently focused on ideas of queer ecology. I am also part of the International Broken Forest Group, and among other initiatives, am working collectively on establishing an international art residency in Temagami. She is a member of the Red Head Gallery collective in Toronto. Must of my practice, informed by theories of queer ecology, explores the connection between the human/animal body and the natural world, working towards the blurring of commonly perceived binaries and dichotomies. Driven by a desire to shed some of these boundaries, I use various strategies such as placing and integrating the lip-sticked kiss mark into landscapes and onto maps; more explicitly portraying a person consuming or being consumed by flower; physically tracing wave and wind patterns over time and focusing on the materiality of paint. In her most recent work, I use rotated photographs taken while paddling along mirrored shorelines of lakes and rivers. The resulting bisymmetrically vertical orientation reveals openings, imagery resembling body parts and other-worldly creatures suggesting interconnectivity and fluidity between the macro and micro, the biotic and abiotic, and the human and non-human.