​I started painting in 2000 with a dedication I had not been able to make before.  Once I chose this path, I knew I had found my passion and my voice.  I have been painting ever since.

Multiple influences inform my practice.  I was born and spent my youth in Caracas, Venezuela.  My family is in the Netherlands, England and Wales. Our little family of four, immigrated here to California when I was 12.

I have srtong memories of many places and they influence my painting in ways I am not always aware.  

​In my mid 20's, I became a naturalized American Citizen.  I gave up my Venezuelan Passport, because it had become so difficult to travel. California had become "my home".

As a painter and a gardener, I have gravitated quite naturally to the abstraction of native poppies. The organic form is so much more engaging for me and malleable compared to the verticle form I had focused on in the past. Most recently I am captivated by the form and the abstraction of POPPIES.  My concern is still with the relationship of figure and ground.

I paint in oil.    Usually there is much underpainting that informs the final texture and subject.  I enjoy the roughness and hand chiseled experience I get from that process. Many paintings are set aside and I give myself time to get to know them and allow them to influence me more slowly in their development. Often a series  will begin, and I have an internal dialogue with myself, the external world, the mark making, and the painting then gets further expressed.

As my exploration  continues, I allow the painting to suggest a poetic reading, that is open to interpretation, evokes the external world, eventually the mark making, becomes both concrete and evocative.

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