It is my belief the landscape and light we see as children forms the very basis of our art and, if we are fortunate, we experience many landscapes throughout our lives.
I was born and spent my early childhood in the tropical, urban, park-like landscape of New Orleans, Louisiana. We moved eighty miles and light years away to Baton Rouge when I was five. I had left paradise. Would anything ever be as beautiful again? Years later, when I began to paint I would return to that childhood landscape for some of my most powerful images.
Seeing a traveling exhibit of contemporary art in my twenties determined the course I would take. I wanted to process my life through painting and found mentors in the faculty of the LSU School of Art. I formed friendships with the graduate students in painting, saw contemporary art at The Baton Rouge Gallery and often visited New Orleans, where the newly created Contemporary Arts Center and warehouse district galleries offered exciting exhibits that mirrored the national art scene.
I had success showing my work in juried shows at the Butler Institute’s Annual Midyear Exhibit, the Rutgers National Works on Paper, Tampa Triennial and the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans. In 1986 I was awarded an SAF/NEA Fellowship in painting and Louisiana Division of the Arts grants in 1998 and 2001.
In 1996, an interest in monotype led me to the Contemporary Artists Center/Berkshire School of Contemporary Art in North Adams, Massachusetts, for a residency in experimental monoprinting. There I met New Orleans artist Dorothy Furlong Gardner. The encaustic monotype process she invented is now an integral part of my studio practice.
Over time, the narrative landscapes of my early career gave way to more abstract imagery. The light and geometry of the Louisiana Gulf Coast with its luminous expanse of marsh, sea and sky has become as riveting to me as the universal dramas once set in my beloved New Orleans and I consider it my new “fortunate landscape.”
