I grew up in Hamilton Massachusetts, graduated from Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School, where the art department let me take the school pottery wheel home in the summer. My family's old trailer became my pottery studio.
After high school, I earned a BFA of Fine Arts in Painting from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1982. While in college, I continued taking pottery classes, but lack of control over how the pieces came out of the kiln, lead me to a major in painting instead. In hindsight, I should have pursued a double major. In my spare time, I painted all kinds of murals on dormitory doors for extra money. If any of you UMASS alumni have pictures of them, please send them to me. I have no records of all those doors. I was also on the Ski team, and was a part of the first women’s ultimate frisbee team - we won the national championship in 1982. I developed a painterly grid technique similar to how a computer pixelates before computers were commonplace in every home. Maybe Chuck Close and Vasarely sort of compares to what I was doing. I graduated Cum Laude.
After a summer of painting houses, I traveled to visit a friend in Charleston, South Carolina for two weeks, and stayed for 7 years. While in Charleston, I spent 3 years as an artist, painting mainly in oils. I was a member of the Marble Arch Gallery Art Cooperative on King Street, and began to show with them every month. This was a fabulous space in the 1980's over the old Opera House on King Street. I had a studio there too. Sometime around 1985, they closed up shop. It pains me to see the retail store which took over the space. Around then, I had a show at the Charleston Library, and was beginning to get write ups in the Post and Currier - the Charleston paper. I was 21.
In 1983, I was given the chance to live on a sailboat and travel. This is where youth prevailed, and I chose live on a 50 year old schooner traveling the Florida coast, and Bahamas. But mostly living in a boatyard in Jacksonville FLA to rebuild the schooner. There I painted seascapes, developed woodworking skills, and learned how to windsurf. I painted a considerable amount which I have very little to show you. They were sold, commissions, or went to family and friends.
By 1987, I was living in Mountain Rest, South Carolina. This area was very remote. I loved it. I worked part time for a white water rafting company that took the photographs of people on the Chattooga River. That's where they filmed the movie “Deliverance”, (cue the banjos). The landscape was magical to paint - lush forests, and many tumbling waterfalls. I was also fascinated at this time with painting renaissance reproductions in this pixelated method which I began to call “Computer Impressionism”. After a hiatus from pottery, I came back to it at a pottery cooperative I found in Seneca SC. I didn’t stay in the coop long as they didn't appreciate the volume of work I was doing as it monopolized the kiln. I purchased a relatively new kiln with all the shelves and apparatus which I found in the classifieds (remember those?). I set it up when I moved back to Massachusetts in 1989.
While living in Beverly, Massachusetts. I got a real job in the printing industry with benefits, bosses, and a time card to punch. I began to work in the computer graphics field during the exciting birth of desktop publishing. I went from working with film to strictly computer-based layouts. I had a wonderful landlord who built me a pottery studio in the basement of my apartment building. I finally had a space of my own to explore pottery and an area for painting in my apartment. This is also when ski racing really took off. I also was crew for racing Hobie cats, and we did come in in 4th in the nationals. Just a few works from this time.
In 1994 I was married and lived in Georgetown, Massachusetts where the pottery studio was once again set up in the basement. After my amicable divorce in 2004, I started a dog walking/boarding/daycare business in my home so I could be home for my son Michael. This is when pottery became a mainstay as I could fit it into the hectic life of daily dog walks and caring for pups and kids. Those were fun days of good physical work. I found that I could keep the dogs happy by sitting among them while I painted pottery. The dogs would all curl up around me, and doze off as I created intricate ornamental style painting on my pieces. The longer I could keep the dogs happy, the more intricate the pieces became.
I met my dear husband Daniel walking his magnificent bull mastiff, Teeka. After Daniel and I married, and moved to North Hampton, New Hampshire, I shut down the dog business. I still consider the pups I cared for my darling babies.
Today, I am a "retired" dog walker and live near the ocean in North Hampton, New Hampshire with Dan, Michael and our black lab Koby. I became a full time artist three years ago and built a new state-of-the-art studio in my cellar here in North Hampton where I have 2 wheels and a fine new kiln I named Honey-bunny. My pottery work has become more and more exploratory as I search for the best mug design. All my work is created using white stoneware clay that fires to cone 6 which allows me to create functional dishwasher and microwave safe pieces.
My painting has taken on a more realistic style and I continue to paint, in my upstairs studio with fantastic natural light. I love using oils in the classic technique. I use the traditional medium "lean to fat" combinations of turpentine, dammar varnish, linseed oil, stand oil, followed by a few coats of varnish many months later. I am fascinated by the old world artists and can spend hours in art museums. I like to go alone, because I could get lost in for hours only to emerge when I get really hungry. I am attempting to understand the old masters techniques. It still motivates me to this day. Lately, I have fallen in love with plein air painting.
I don’t have a formal list of shows or galleries where my work has been/or is displayed as there aren’t many (I’m being honest here). My goal as an artist would be to explore this side of the fine arts world and to show at galleries and get recognition for my work. If you have any in mind, please let me know! For now, I prefer to share the amazing life I’ve led, and the work it has inspired.
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