Once you have an idea, you need to follow through with it. Many years ago on a trip to Italy I led with youth including my daughter, we visited Verona and an outdoors market there. From a photograph we took, my daughter painted a display of apples. I always loved that painting, bringing back good memories. At the Farmers Market, I find a banquet of color. Everyone knows the Farmers Market, where they exist in communities throughout the world and are local events. Although I frequent a specific Farmers Market, this series is dedicated to the many that exist throughout the world, each providing indigenous fruits, flowers, vegetables, baked and homemade goods, and cultural items of varied geographic regions.

In the US, times I am sure, the way we purchase groceries has largely changed. I grew up in a time when we had an egg man, a milkman, and were a one-car family. Farmers markets are not as much a necessity now, but provide more of an emotional and social outlet. The construct of a Farmers Market has become a mostly weekend happening and is popular now because of a resurgence and awareness of eating healthy, which includes organic foods. It harkens back to a time when life was perhaps kinder, allowing the community to come together in a casual enjoyable way.

My ideas, my concepts are based on simplicity, which is a Franciscan charism and integral to my way of life. There is so much complexity and negativity in the world, I want to work with imagery that is uplifting. That is something that gives positive, imagery, compositions, colors, and memories of experience, which celebrate life. I consider myself as an artist, to be a co-creator with my God that creates into becoming every day.

I continue to learn in painting- Purples and violets are the hardest colors to mix. I value continuing to learn about painting with each painting I do. There is always problem solving and modifications to consider.

As can be observed, my paintings have a textural foundation. My long-held practice of applying a textural foundation conveys an analogy in nature of the underlying layers and contiguous cycle of the decomposing, becoming, and the living.

Today, some believe that climate change is a hoax; “fake news”, artificial intelligence and deep fake videos, have us questioning what is fact and what is fiction? Our beliefs are becoming muddled with what is data driven and fact-based. As I create this art I’m wondering if we are returning to a time when what you believed to be true was all that was required. A period of Enlightenment followed the dark ages. Have we returned to the dark ages? I hope not but if we are, one thing I “know” (believe) it’s that change will come again.

I am a self taught painter and more recently, ceramic potter (RedRimPottery). I have a published book of photographic puns (Funny Side Up), am co-creator of a learn-to-read tactile manual that helps struggling and beginner readers, (Bumpybooks) and a NJ public school art teacher.

Decades later, living in the U.S. and having been working full time at technology companies specializing in product marketing and pricing strategy, I wanted to draw again in January 2015 after taking my two older children to drawing lessons. I started with still life and figure drawing and found that I love using charcoal and watercolor for their spontaneity, fluidity, and expressiveness. To make up for my lack of formal art training, I took week-long workshops from master painters – David Taylor, Joseph Zbukvic, Eudes Correia, Mary Whyte, and Henry Yan – and made tremendous progress thanks to their teaching.

I also started sketching Jersey City in the spring of 2018. Initially, I was just passing time while waiting in line at Wonder Bagel or having ice cream at Torico. The more I sketch, the more places I found interesting. My casual doodling grew to an ambition to document my neighborhood as we know it today. I always sketch on location in order to capture the energy of the moment and the place.

After many years in Jersey City, I now live in Montclair, NJ with my science journalist husband and my three children, who enjoy correcting my grammar from time to time.