I use acrylic paint and collage paper to unwind my perfectionism and connect with the spontaneous joy of improvisational mark making. I approach each new piece with a beginner’s mind, holding an openness, eagerness and lack of preconception, like an alluring dance with the unknown. 

My journey to abstraction began as the little girl who was scared to draw outside of the lines. I would sit quietly for hours at the small table in the kitchen corner meticulously drawing and painting. My mom teased that I was the only five-year-old who used Wite-Out to correct her mistakes.

In high school I was the art teacher’s darling. I composed watercolor portraits that captured each eyelash and glint in the eye with utmost precision, inspired by the photorealism of Chuck Close. 

You could say that my early art was “Type A”. I brought the same focus and drive to the rest of my life, and my perfectionism carried me into a successful career as a therapist.

And then I became a mother. Motherhood, as it turns out, is seriously messy. The fastidiousness I had relied on my entire life no longer worked. I could either drive myself crazy perpetually cleaning up the endless inner and outer messes, or I could learn how to let go. 

Abstract art has become my teacher. It is healing and making whole the parts of me that want things to be “just so.” In the studio, my goal-oriented, meticulous nature has to surrender to the uncomfortable, dynamic tension of not knowing where I’m going.

Abstraction asks me to give up the urge to faithfully reproduce what I see in my mind’s eye. Instead, I follow an emergent process. I begin by laying down a color, a mark, or a piece of collage paper that sparks my interest, and then I simply respond. Each piece unfolds as a series of impulses and responses until there is no obvious next move. When something inside me relaxes into calm delight, I know the work is finished.