“It’s impossible to fail if one doesn’t know how the end should look. And it’s impossible to succeed. But it’s possible to enjoy.” — Sarah Manguso
I’m a fourth-generation painter from a family of visual artists, but because writing has always been my first love as an artist, it took a life-altering concussion in 2020 — including light sensitivity so intense I was unable to use screens for months — to open me up to my longing to create visual art.
I once described visual art as “seeing aware of seeing,” and I have never been more aware of seeing than during the recovery process from this traumatic brain injury. Light was brighter. Colors more shockingly themselves — red redder, blue bluer. At one point in my healing process, I was assigned a series of complex vision-therapy exercises by a neuro-opthalmologist, and then, one day, about six weeks into doing these daily exercises, I felt something shift — as if a kaleidescope had clicked into a new form and I could see in a way I never had. I am also a yoga teacher and Buddhist meditation practitioner, and my painting practice is deeply informed by my yoga and meditation practices. I see the creation of art as a practice of gesture, presence, and a laboratory to explore the interdependent relationship between intention and chaos/chance.
My intention is to create works from within a state of radical acceptance and gratitude for the wild, emergent, uncertain adventure of being human and alive in this moment in history we all share — poised on the precipice of climate collapse, and desperately trying to face and transform our own lineages of pain into a future that recalls our deepest longing is to belong to one another and to the earth.
I adore the natural world and its intricate beauty. My recent paintings are non-objective, primarily motivated by gesture/texture/color studies, but many of them seem to suggest natural elements and images, such as moss, sky, ocean, and botanical forms.
Thank you for being here! Many of these works are available for purchase. Feel free to contact me using the contact form on my site for more information.