My Journey

I have had a passion for creating art since childhood. My art education consists of a diploma in Fine Arts from the Ontario College of Arts and Design and painting courses in the summer from Sir Sanford Fleming School of Art in Haliburton. Since retiring from a career in teaching, I have lots of time to devote to painting.

My passion for painting:
In the last 20 years I have begun to find my style and medium as a visual artist. I fell in love with watercolours! I love the spontaneity and immediacy of this medium and the way you can cover the paper with large washes of colours wet in wet.
I paint quickly and boldly, so watercolour is perfect for me.

My love of the Canadian landscape:
My deepest joy is plein air landscape painting. My first love is landscape painting. I partly owe this to my outdoorsy dad, who took my brother and I camping, fishing, hiking, biking and cross country skiing when I was a child. I feel at home in the great outdoors, and still enjoy hiking and biking, but most of all painting “plein air”.

My vision: Capture the essence of a scene and the feelings of the moment. To capture emotions means paying attention to the light and conveying this in the most effective way. Capturing the essence means to simplify and be spontaneous.
I often don’t plan. I just dive in and paint instinctively. It’s like being on a crazy roller coaster ride and I love it!

My Style:
My favourite artists are Tom Thomson, Van Gogh and Monet. They were all passionate, bold painters of nature. Monet was obsessed with capturing the light and mood of a place, while Van Gogh and Thomson interpreted the landscape with passion and intensity. My painting is a journey. Along the way, I make exciting and surprising discoveries. After each painting, I know I am a little further along the path. I am thankful for this wonderful gift.