I won a drawing contest in Grade 5. The prize was a chance to draw the map of Australia on the chalk board. I was hooked...and off to a career in art!
Or so I thought.
It took a few years to finally get to that career. Although I'm mostly self taught, art study was always a part of my life. Classes at the Ontario College of Art, University of Waterloo, York University and some local community colleges helped me develop my technique. And while art remained a hobby for many years while I pursued a career in newspapers and magazines, I finally jumped into a permanent art career 15 years ago.
In the beginning, I worked with pastel. I loved the soft, chalky look to a landscape and my work was represented by several galleries. Then I was asked to teach a decorative painting class and life changed again. I started working with acrylics and learned how to create a soft, pastel-like look to my acrylic paintings.
Since 1997, I've licensed my designs to decorative painting magazines; to publishers of instructional painting books; to Highland Graphics, Evergreen, Sagebrush, Directional Art and Penny Lane. And I've taught decorative painting throughout North America.
Some of my award-winning paintings have been juried into shows in New York City, Atlanta, Wisconsin, the Society of Canadian Artists, a national textile exhibition and many local juried shows.
Living in the country affords me the opportunity to paint some incredible snapshots of nature. For my larger landscape paintings, I work on the emotional impact of a scene starting with small studies en plein air then using those studies to create larger studio works filled with colour and texture.
