About the Artist

I grew up in the Lowell/Cascade area, where my grade school years were in a one-room school house, which still exists but is now a home.  My high school years were at Marywood Academy in Grand Rapids where I majored in Voice.

I attended Aquinas College for a year, married, had six children and worked as a school bus driver for 33 years before retiring in 1998.  I also have been working for Hotel Montcalm Antiques in Stanton, where we have lived for the last 16 years.

I am mostly self taught along with the guidance and inspiration of several workshops.  My media of choice is watercolor and watermedia.  I have been painting for several years now and find it to be a driving passion in my life.

My work is mostly semi-abstract/representational, and when I start a painting I’m never sure how it will end up.

I often start with pouring various colors on my paper, guiding the direction in which they flow as much as possible, and then let them dry and see what I have to work with.  Sometimes I am able to find a subject right away, and sometimes I have to wait for a period of time before my subject appears.

Other times I have a subject in mind and then pour my colors; however, frequently the painting develops in an entirely different direction than that which I had anticipated. And that is one of the reasons I find watercolor so exciting.

I occasionally use gel media or gesso on the paper to start, using general shapes like perspective or figural and floral shapes as a beginning place to start working from.  Other times, I make the subject realistic and the background more abstract.

I hope you enjoy my work and find it interesting.