In the summer of 2020 straying far from home was not advisable. Some local friends left for the summer and invited me to visit their home to come and go as I wished, providing company for their two cats who tended to stray if they didn’t get enough human attention. I was happy to oblige because their home reminded me of the places my beloved Pierre Bonnard painted. The magic he created in intimate spaces with intense but muted colors has always drawn me in. I had the good fortune to visit fortune to visit the 2019 exhibition of his work “The Colour of Memory” in Vienna. So my summer retreat was idyllic.

I make collage interpretations of landscape and other paintings or sometimes just let them build themselves from an idea. I love the process of first washing the paper with thin acrylic color and distressing the surface to then color it with soft pastel that lets the marks show through. I create a layered effect that way before tearing the paper into strips to become my palette.

Louisiana is my native state. When I moved to Maryland’s Eastern Shore in 1987 the watery landscape with its myriad of small waterways snaking through the pastoral landscape made me feel at home. My BFA in painting is from Louisiana State University where I was fortunate to study with some strong colorists who had studied with Josef Albers at Yale. I continue my explorations with other artists at Mississippi Art Colony in spring and fall when time and circumstance allow. There have been some wonderful practicing teaching artists who are invited to every session.

I am a teaching artist for the Academy Art Museum and Chesapeake Multicultural Resource Center.