I grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, surrounded by farmland, dairies and Amish, and was fortunate enough to study diverse art in high school. I earned my BFA in New York at Alfred University, renowned for its ceramic art program, where I mainly created large scale, figure sculpture.
 

I have always been a maker.  As a child I drew and built things, which evolved into a passion for creating art.  I have always loved drawing people, other subjects interest me, but for me there is an element of spiritual discovery and synergy that comes alive when I capture a likeness.  I fell in love with pottery and sculpture in high school and focused on that in college and my early work. I rediscovered painting about five years ago after a few eye surgeries prevented me from the physicality of sculpting. The eye surgeries left me with severely clouded and warped vision in my right eye, which ignited an interest in perception and distortion.

 

I began this series of artist portraits with the Salvador Dali painting. For this series I chose visual artists who are vital and formative, not only in their work, but in their personalities and influence on collective culture. When I paint, I work very quickly and boldly, searching for the form with big strokes as I focus in with detail.  My goal is not portraiture, but a painting which transcends likeness, with a window to the interior life of my subject. With my vision changes after my retina detachments, my work has become looser and more colorful, mirroring the distortion in my own perception as I explore different palates and color relationships.