the artist

Bio

I am returning to oil painting after ten years of pursuing other ventures. Before that, I had worked as an artist part time for several years, selling well over 100 oil paintings, in galleries, at festivals, to private collectors and corporate clients. My paintings were juried into art competitions, displayed in new office buildings, shown in a museum, and one large Southwest landscape still hangs in the Salt Lake International Airport.

Graduating from the University of Utah in 1999 with a BFA and four additional years in Architectural Studies, I’ve taught private art lessons, taught art in schools, and created an art class for an adult Continuing Education program. I moved to spectacular Southern Utah with my family several years ago.

 

Influences
One of my greatest academic influences came from Thomas Kass, who taught the Design Studio in the Architecture Department at the U of U, and who studied color theory under Josef Albers at Yale. He brought those color principles and Albers’ “Interaction of Color” to the curriculum at the U of U. Albers was a teacher at the Bauhaus, so it is equivalent to having 2nd generation Bauhaus instruction. Very valuable, and a good foundation.

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I learned much from Paul Davis and Dave Dornan at the University of Utah in the Art Dept. Paul Davis was a master in technique and with oil portraits, while I was fortunate to have taken Dave Dornan’s last class at the U of U, which was a Plein Air landscape painting class.

I also had the opportunity to take all of the Art History courses taught by Bob Olpin, who was a leading expert on 19th Century landscape painters, and especially Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. I have always had a passion for their work, from Corot and Monet through Cassat, Van Gogh, Seurat and Degas. Additionally, I have studied Jackson Pollock, JMW Turner, Maxfield Parrish, and love the watercolors of Seargent, Whistler and Homer. For modern artists, I most admire the Plein Air painters, such as Kevin MacPherson, Calvin Liang, and Utah artist Bonnie Posselli.