ABOUT

    At the age of six I agreed with my first-grade teacher that I was an artist: a fanciful, farfetched decision for a female child of the 1961 Montana mythic west. It’s been a marvelous life journey in the arts ever since. I’ve been an illustrator, painter, potter, sculptor, and teacher.     

Now retired from teaching and other jobs, I am both author and illustrator of yet unpublished children’s books. There are several. I never experience artist’s block…ever. If anything, I have artist’s panic. There’s so little time, and so many stories that need to be written and drawn, heard and seen. By the time I get one book done I’m on the next. While working on new stories, the older ones sit for months and are re-written, again and again. Characters are sketched from all sides. Their personalities and family/community relationships are plotted on scrap paper and filed in folders.  Dummy books are made and stored in the dummy book box.   

Then amongst the intense focus, I'll stop and spend weeks drawing and painting numerous random images.

With Hammy the Squirrel from Over the Hedge as my spirit animal, I continue my quest to harness this perpetual, quiet explosion of image and story.