Tell us about your art journey!

As a child I loved art.  My mother supported me on this journey, taking my sisters and me to museums and art classes. She found a wonderful teacher for us who taught us in various mediums with a focus on watercolors.  I continued my passion for creating art into adulthood.  As a young mom I found watercolor to be the perfect medium because I could paint anywhere and set up my paints quickly.  Now that my kids are grown and I can easily use any medium without worry about clean-up or time constraints, I continue to choose watercolor because of what the paints can do.  The joy of watching the paint explode with color when painting wet-on-wet, the thrill of seeing colors mix and blend on the paper, and the satisfaction of layering colors all keep me hooked on this medium.  I'm excited to be Stoneworks Mill February artist and to bring you works I've created with these paints all month.❤️

I'm from Eastern Kansas, which is quite hilly with gorgeous, expansive skies.  I find that when I do a landscape painting I want to abstract and highlight the beauty of the landforms.  However, my approach to painting the local flora is quite different.  I love how when I really look closely at a section of ground, whether it's along a prairie path or even the edge of the roadside, there are so many different plants all growing together.  I want to capture not only the shape of their leaves but the shapes between their leaves, the depth as one looks closely in among the plants.  I want to capture the change between how the plant starts it growth near the ground, and how it changes as it moves up towards the light. When I look at vegetation I see not only the plant but earth and sky.

That's a great question because I love to travel. I often paint while on vacation, in part because it's a way of seeing more deeply. Now, I were to travel specifically for painting I'd go to places where there are lovely wildflowers. I'd love a chance to look deeply at the flora of different regions in the same way I have had a chance to get to know the plants of Kansas. I can't decide if I would want to explore a New England meadow or the tiny flowers of the Rocky Mountain alpine tundra.❤️

I definitely have favorites. I love Allium because it's a deep, rich purple, but is also a very clear color. Yonder is another favorite - it's light and lovely but is very powerful with what it can do within a painting ❤️

At this time, I'm running online purchases through my Etsy shop. I don't always get all the works I post on Instagram up, so if someone is interested in purchasing something and they don't see it on Etsy they can message me either on Etsy or on Instagram.❤️