About the Artist
Abstract painter. Las Cruces, New Mexico.
Artist statement
Cultivate it! Nurture those sparks until they generate fire in your belly!
I’ve always been incredibly curious about a wide range of disparate and sometimes controversial subjects, but my curiosities were something I felt a bit self conscious sharing with others. Now that I’m older, I wonder why I would ever feel that way. Cultivate it! Nurture those sparks until they generate fire in your belly! Those fires are translated into canvases and substrates that represent all your learned…all you’ve become!
Tending to the fire in my own mythical landscape means, for me, processing the transitions and transformations in my life—from a naive girl to a complex woman, from a strict Catholic to an omnist, and from a devoted mother to a wiser menopausal crone. As women, we walk those sticky lines, slipping out of one skin and into another throughout life. I want to celebrate our collective strength.
The goal of painting is to reach the FLOW state, right? You need to find a way to surrender yourself to that meditative state of mind where what you do, who you are, and what can be all meshes together in one beautiful expression.
I’m trying to give myself permission to grow in to something MORE, absent of creative ego fear. An unselfconscious curiosity. That is a hard ask! Being vulnerable can be difficult, and most artists struggle with it, but I don’t want to overthink things. I want to trust my innate responsiveness and intuition as to what comes next.
How it gets made
The painting decides
more than I do
Laying down the ground
Every painting starts with a large field of color applied fast, with a big brush or a palette knife. The goal is to get something on the surface before I have time to think about what it should be. That first layer is the most honest part of the work.
Finding it underneath
The next several layers are a conversation with what's already there. I scrape back, overpaint, tear, cover. The painting accumulates evidence of its own process. That history is part of what makes it worth looking at.
Knowing when to stop
A painting is done when adding anything else would be answering questions it doesn't need to answer. That's harder to know than it sounds. I leave work on the wall for days before I decide. Sometimes weeks.
The studio
Las Cruces,
New Mexico
3
Mediums
27+
Originals available
3–5
Days to ship
NM
Ships from
The studio is in the high desert. The quality of light changes depending on the season, the time of day, and whether there's been rain. Those things find their way into the work even when I'm not trying to put them there.
Every piece ships directly from the studio, signed by hand. Commissions are open. I work in acrylic, watercolor, and mixed media on canvas, paper, and birch panel.
A commission typically starts with a conversation about color, scale, and what you're hoping to live with. I don't paint portraits or representational work. What I can do is start from a feeling, a palette, or a place and build something that belongs to you and nowhere else.
Commissions take six to twelve weeks from deposit to delivery. Prices start at $800 for works under 18 inches. Get in touch before you've figured out exactly what you want.
In the studio
@solastalgiaart