I am a painter, teacher, and community leader. 2020 was the 20th anniversary of Artascope Studios, a community art center that I founded out of an apartment in South Portland. Now a non-profit organization located in Yarmouth, the studio is a vibrant hub of arts education. Teaching art has allowed me to grow as an artist while raising my children. In my twenties and thirties I worked professionally as a filmmaker and photographer. In the late ‘90’s I enrolled in art school full time but soon realized that it did not mesh with the demands of my family life. I opted to devote my time to developing Artascope while my children were young. In 2021 I began a three-year Graduate Painting Program at the New York Studio School of Painting, Drawing and Sculpture in the inaugural “Virtual Certificate” cohort. This experience has impacted my painting practice in every possible way. I am a prolific painter and I work both in-studio and Plein-Air. I make paintings that explore our relationships to each other as well as our engagement with the land, sky, and sea and the other species that inhabit these spaces.

“Field of Study” project

This project began for me during the summer of 2020. Throughout that Spring, Summer, and into the Fall of 2020 I painted in my own garden, my friend's gardens, and eventually the Community Garden in Yarmouth. What began as a way for me to work through the feelings of insecurity that accompanied the pandemic became a deep way to connect with other people and to share their passion for the natural world and its gifts. I have come to understand that communal gardening creates a beautiful platform for human interaction in much the same way that community art making does. This project is about combining these two activities, painting and gardening, along the way creating interactive opportunities for the public to engage.

This project led to an exhibition at the Library Gallery from March through May, 2023