The Artist
I am a visual artist born in the New Jersey town of Delran. I moved to Boston in 1995 to study at the School of the Museum of Fine Art. I currently live and work in the South End of Boston. At a young age, I always craved to be entertained which lead me to the arts. Whether it be music, film, television, or the visual arts, all were influential in my artistic development. Standouts of influence are the rock bands, Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, films, Bonnie & Clyde, Easy Rider, and Frenzy, television, All in the Family and Twilight Zone. They weren't something I necessarily wanted to recreate, it was more the knowledge of the creative process behind them.
My initial inspiration to create came from coloring books, cartoons, and albums covers of the 1960s & 1970s. They are still the things that inspire me today. But, it's modern painting that I fell in love with at a young age. It's a language that I felt connected to even though I didn't practice it until my early 30s.
About
The Work
As a multidisciplinary artist I work in drawing, painting, printing, bookmaking, and digital imagery. Currently, my focus has been on digital imagery and painting. Art making to me is cathartic. Key visual ideas or conversations I explore in my work come from my psyche when I have a challenge or when a negative event occurs. Most of the time the work turns out colorful, energetic, and psychedelic. As I work out the challenge in my head, art making becomes both a distraction and a visual way through to the other side.
Psychedelia Series One & Two
Near the beginning of the pandemic a friend introduced me to creating art digitally. I fell in love with the process and it was extremely convenient. All I needed was my iPad! I spent several weeks learning what the technology can do. The learning process morphed into creating my first digital series, Psychedelia One. After a little over a year and producing over 500 digital images, I came across a function of the technology where you could push, pull, and twist your image. This resulted in the series, Psychedelia Two.
Still Life Series
The inclusion of flowers in my work has a storied history. In my teenage years, along with taking notes in class, I would create ink drawings in the margins of my notebooks. They were elaborate creations of what I considered "futuristic flowers". I'm not sure where this idea came from at the time, but by the end of high school I had a portfolio of my work in many notebooks. Unfortunately, I didn't save any of them. My work has since contained abstract flowers and gardens on and off through the years. Fast forward about 14-15 years and I meet my husband, Jeff, a horticulturist who was responsible for many years of the beautiful gardens at Hammersmith Farm in Newport, RI. My affinity towards flowers began to make sense. Hammersmith Farm was where Jacqueline Lee Bouvier and John F. Kennedy held their wedding reception on September 12, 1953. At the time, Jackie's step father, Hugh D. Auchincloss, Jr., owned the property. By the time I met Jeff, it had been sold to a group of investors who opened the property as a museum for public tours and events. Jeff continued to work for the new owners. Fast forward again to 2023 - my latest rendition of flowers continues and my digitally created Still Life series begins.
