In Her Own Words

I never set out to be a painter.

I was studying something else entirely at university, living the way you do when you haven't quite figured out what your life is supposed to look like. I had always drawn— since the time I was little. It was simply something I did, the way some people hum without realizing it. As a young adult, someone noticed my drawings and suggested I could make a little extra income painting characters on the walls of children's rooms. So I set up a meeting with a man named Roger, who ran a company creating custom, hand-painted murals for high-end homes and children's hospitals. I wasn't looking for a job. I was just looking for advice.

Three days later, he offered me one. I was surprised: I told him I'd never actually painted before.

He said something I've never forgotten: "If you can draw, you can paint."

He was right. And thirty years later, I'm still painting.

What drew me, and what still draws me, to large-scale work, is something that's almost difficult to explain. There is a particular kind of giddiness I feel standing in front of a fully painted wall, watching something that existed only as a small drawing become something you can walk up to, something that surrounds you. In my commissioned work, the jolt comes later— when the painting finally meets the space it was made for and settles into the room alongside everything else and the whole vision clicks into place. That moment never gets old. It's still a major reason why I do this.


I found my way to interior designers early on in my career, through Roger, who worked with them regularly. What I discovered, and what continues to surprise some people, is that the designers I work with are anything but egotistical. They are curious, client-focused, and deeply invested in creating something that will be loved for years. We share the same goal. They bring what I could never provide: the ability to source, curate, and compose an entire environment. I bring what they can't: the art that pulls it all together.

I take a lot into consideration when designing a piece of art for a client. I want to know how the individual or family lives in the home; whether there are children, pets, how much traffic moves through it. It’s important to me because that determines everything from materials to scale to finish. I've found that the designers I work with best share that same sensibility. We're not just making something beautiful. We're making something that should live in the world, gracefully, for a long time to come.


What makes me say yes to a project is simple: the right people and the right challenge. I am drawn to projects that ask something new of me; whether it’s a material I haven't worked with, a scale I haven't attempted, a space that presents a challenge worth solving. But more than anything, I say yes when I feel the chemistry of a genuine collaboration. I am also a professional in the ways that matter — on time, within budget, receptive to feedback — and I am genuinely invested in making the designer look good. That's not a footnote to my work. It's central to it.


In my own studio, away from commissions, my practice looks a little different. Right now I'm preparing a series for the Festival of Arts, a renowned summer-long art show located in Southern California. The series centers around vintage toys rendered from unusual perspectives, somewhere between realism and abstraction. I am fascinated by the familiar made strange, by the way a shift in perspective can turn something ordinary into something that makes you stop and look twice. It's playful. In the studio, I give myself permission to be experimental — to layer materials, build sculptural forms, follow a process without knowing exactly where it leads. It balances the work I do for others, which is specific and intentional by nature. Both feed each other in a way that’s essential to my creativity.


When someone stands in front of one of my paintings, I want them to feel calm. Happy. Curious. I want them to be drawn in: not just to the subject, but to the surface itself. In my work, the closer you get, the more there is to see. I love how a painting looks one way when standing 10 feet away, and quite another way when seeing it close up. I hope the viewer feels the tiniest bit of connection between how they feel while looking, with how I felt while creating.


Curiosity, connection, and relationship are not just things I value in my work. They are how I move through the world. I take enormous pride in what I make, and yet I have no ego around it in the stereotypical sense, because the thing I care most about is the whole. Sometimes my work is the focal point of a room. Sometimes it's the thing that quietly holds everything else together, that people might only notice on the third visit and can't believe they missed. I love both equally. What matters is that the space is right, that the vision is realized, that the client walks in and feels exactly the way they were meant to feel.

That's the work. That's always been the work.