I am an artist and mother, located in the woods south of Charlottesville, Va.

I create work on the Mind—and its relation to the Self and to all Others—through my process of making small figurative line drawings on paper and larger oil paintings on unprimed canvas. I form these through images, and words and poems received in mind. I want to understand the feeling behind these images and words and express them as a visual form of communicating an honest expression of existence. My work aims to existentially explore connectedness and emotion between the self and others, and memories and thoughts, while using color and texture to soothe and to make the expressions of the mind, tangible.

Other times, I create work on what’s before me, with a desire to capture an expression of the people who surround me, and their interaction with the natural world. Often working with oil paint on cardboard and oil pastels, along with oil paints on unprimed canvas.

I have been teaching myself to paint for 11 years. I spent three years at VCU Arts, focused on photography and film, where I made explorative photo, video, and performative work, while taking drawing classes. I have a BA in Philosophy from VCU. Alongside this, I formed my personal practice through small and large line drawings and mixed media works on large canvases.

I am interested in the marks and forms made by the self-taught artist, the folk artist, and the outsider, and the truthful communication expressed through these marks. I aim to draw and paint in a way that allows my innate method of drawing and painting—as inherited and expressed through the untrained female natural artists on my paternal grandparents’ side—to come out, uninhibited.

I understand my art as a way of forming a language with which I can be in conversation and connection with others.