My earliest memories of art happened before I was in school. When my grandmother and I would decide to have an adventure, we would pack a lunch and ride the streetcar to the end of the line and walk forever to the river to skip rocks and sit in the shade of a huge rock cliff. We’d look at the Indian rock paintings that covered the cliff and decide what stories the Indians were telling.  I would fix the paintings with my color crayons so the stories made more sense, or just to make them look better. My grandmother assumed it was fine for me to fix the paintings because she was at least half an Indian. When we weren’t able to go on adventures, I would fix the pictures in my coloring books, adding objects to the pictures with a black pen and coloring them in.

My art is not inspired by a specific thing or person or act. Rather, when I initially commence painting, it is like striking the first note or chord of a jazz composition that leads me to compose the next, and the next. I paint, and painting inspires my recollection of reality, which is a continuous memory of what was; an internal autobiographical movie. Where some are moved to create concrete things like animals or mountains, my personal expression of beauty is exhibited through my work, with lines, colors, shapes and textures.

From the time I was a child drawing with crayons on a rock wall until now, I have been exploring the world of art in all of its forms. After an initial art class, which I took with my mother at the age of 15, I went on to formally study art at Oregon State. During my time there, I earned a full scholarship to Brooklyn School of Art in New York, where I continued to expand my knowledge of art history and principles of design. I went on to place my paintings and sculptures in select collections in several countries. While traveling the world, I experienced beauty in everything: the symbolism of a sculpture in Indonesia and the elegance of a flower in Thailand. The extravagance of architecture in Turkey and Iran. They inspired me to rise to higher standards in my own expression.

After gaining years of experience and knowledge through extensive travel and countless hours of experimentation, I am finally in a place where I feel ready to show my work once again.