I was born in Portland, Oregon and grew up in the Pacific Northwest where I developed a love of drawing and painting. I was inspired by my artist aunt who filled our home with her beautiful oil paintings. She gave me painting lessons, starting when I was ten, first in oils and then in watercolors. After high school, I traveled throughout the country always carrying my sketchbook and drawing friend’s portraits and caricatures of the people and animals that I had met.
I lived for several years in the woods in Southern Oregon in a primitive cabin with no electricity or running water. Later, I moved to Maui with my three-year-old daughter, Aura, and lived in a remote rain-forest community about 11 miles west of the small town of Hana where I continued to draw and paint in watercolors. During the 1980s, I took course work in life drawing and pastel painting at the Honolulu Academy of Arts on the Island of Oahu. I then returned to the rain-forest of Maui to design and produce silk clothing through the 1990s.

In 2006, I met my husband, Brian at a coffee shop in the mountain town of Keokea, Maui and we were soon living together on the slopes of Haleakala. In 2011, we adopted two baby rescue donkeys, George and Gracie, from the Island of Hawai’i. They were descendants of the famous Kona Nightingales who once carried coffee from the farms on the steep slopes of Hualalai to the port at Kailua in Kona.

I currently live in the mountains of Southern Colorado with Brian and our two donkeys. As an artist, I am inspired by the natural beauty of the places where I’ve lived and by the affection and hilarious antics of our Kona Nightingales and the other animals in our lives and, of course, by the love and good humor of the people of Hawai’i and the Southwest. I hope that my art brightens your day and maybe gives you a chuckle or even a good laugh.