Growing up in Sacramento, California in the 70's, the West Coast figurative painters were always present in my consciousness. And not just in a theoretical sense, but in a concrete sense - my parents’ friends collected the work; Wayne Thiebaud was a member our local tennis club. These artists existed for me, and their stroke and subject matter and handling of paint have left their mark on me.

It was in high school that I began feeling emotionally dependent upon my artwork. I began to need to do the work. I went to college at U.C. Santa Cruz and majored in painting and printmaking. After graduating in 1995, I married an artist. We met in college, the first day of beginning drawing, when we had to pair up and draw each other. Together, we moved to San Francisco and lived in the Haight/Ashbury for ten years.

In 2004, we moved to Oakland after our daughter, Giselle, was born. Since her birth, I have found myself again with a pressing need to paint. It is only through painting that I can process my life as a mother and try to carve out emotional space for myself.

I enjoy living in the Bay Area, and take inspiration from the thriving contemporary art scenes in Oakland and San Francisco. I also continue to be inspired in a concrete way by the West Coast figurative painters. I live one block away from the California College of Arts and Crafts, and a few minutes from where Diebenkorn lived and painted. I can feel that history; I can see their stroke in my stroke.