Her work is in the permanent collections of The Arts and Artifacts Department of the Schomburg Center For Research in Black Culture, The Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop Collection and Mocada Museum. My publications include the Huffington Post, Essentials of Sociology: A Down to Earth Approach by James M. Henslin, Allyn & Bacon publishers, Bronx Uptown Express Newspaper and a mention in the New York Times. My exhibitions include BronxArtSpace, Selena Gallery, Long Island University, The Elizabeth Foundation for The Arts and the Conde Nast Times Square Lobby Gallery. I’m a recipient of the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop Scholarship, and for several years I sat on their board of governors. I’ve had residencies with the Ora Lehrman Foundation and a 10-year studio space residency with chashama.
Conceptual Motivations
Finding her voice as an artist came from a hunger or a passion for understanding myself and a desire to live up to my potential. I always felt an underlying tug to pursue the arts. In the beginning I thought it was fashion, but eventually realized that I was meant to be a painter. My earliest pieces were portraits, beginning with my son. Once I started, it seemed I began working overnight as a formal painter, gaining commissions for detailed portrait paintings. I think that series came out of a need to validate my academic drawing skills.
Over the course of creating 10 portraits, seven of which I sold, I was ready for something more imaginative, and a little less controlled. I began a series inspired by my childhood memories of running around rural Illinois, playing barefoot in search of nature’s wonders or spending time around the house with family members. Many works from this “Mudpie” series were published in college textbooks and in private and library collections.
After that, my career really began to take off. I was exhibiting in galleries, my work was being purchased by collectors, and was even accepted in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. To be honored this way a mere four years after I began my professional artistic career was truly something.
After several years working on this special series related to my childhood, I was again looking for a change. I thought I was ready for abstract painting, but to my surprise I felt that these pieces lacked an understanding of the subject. I knew there had to be something more than just pushing pretty colors across the surface of a canvas. I needed to understand what I was doing, so I could present something more coherent.
So I went back to the figure. This time, I took up a new series - “Dancers.” Here I was able to loosen up and let go of all the rules of anatomy. It’s easier to break the rules when you understand them - my early stages of traditional formal painting definitely paid off. My dancers started as pastel paintings on large sheets of paper that were still pretty much anatomically correct, but as I worked, I was getting looser... and I liked it. I used mostly the female form, where I felt I had more leeway in expressing myself lyrically than with the male figure.
Like I did when I first began painting, I used my understanding of traditional drawing skills to create my figures. Over time, my work with the dancers became increasingly loose, and I was gaining a better understanding of art. I did this for a few years and discovered digital art - Illustrator and Photoshop. Some of this work was reproduced into cards and prints and sold in museum gift shops and commercial stores. Then, still gravitating towards abstraction, but driven by a need to understand what I was doing, I sought a familiar reference - nature.
I love everything about nature, its opposites that harmonize and communicate, textures, compositions, similarities in the structures of many life forms, and finding relationships I never imagined existed. Just walking through a natural environment like a park, I feel calmed and relaxed, and I’m able to problem solve and work out my ideas. I can take the simplest structure in nature and abstract it over and over and over and have a different outcome each time. At this point in my life, I cannot imagine ever running out of ways to express artistically what I see in nature.
Through my observations in nature along with the patterns I detected in the crowds of people walking in the busy streets of Manhattan, I was prompted to do some research in physics, where I discovered the Fibonacci Sequence. I know most people are familiar with its expression as a spiral but I'm fascinated by "tree branching" and directional flow that I believe is also related to pedestrian flow. This and prime numbers became huge elements in helping me bring a sort of natural structure to my abstract work. Incorporating these elements of physics and math into my artistic process has been a fantastic development. It has informed my continuing exploration of both the “Dancers” and “Nature’s Composition” series I have been working on now for more than 10 years.
The one thing in common with all the phases of my work, is that each new push came from a personal passion and an honest exploration. I have enjoyed embodying an ever changing voice through my work, even inside the structure of each particular thematic series.
