I was born in Boston Ma, second of four children. My father was a surgeon, my mother a homemaker. When my father finished his residency in Boston, we moved to Greensboro, NC where he set up practice and we grew up. My mother took us to museums and exposed us to all kinds of art and music. She herself loved contemporary art; those early impressions are indelible. I attended high school and college in Greensboro, earning a bachelors degree in English and psychology at UNC-G, then followed by an MFA in creative writing at UNC-G where I studied with Lee Zacharias, Fred Chappell and Robert Watson. My focus was the short story. Those were fertile and creative times.
I have always been an artist but it has mostly been a private endeavor. I took some private classes in oil painting in junior high and high school. I didn’t study art in the public school after junior high because college requirements left little room for electives. However, I never quit painting. I just continued on my own. I had one destructive art teacher as an undergrad at UNC-G who discouraged me from pursuing an art major. At that point, I turned to writing.
One of the classic ways an artist learns is to copy the works of other artists which I did in those early private lessons; I did a great many miniature paintings of impressionist still lifes- which are lovely to do. Later, on my own, I was hypnotized by the surrealists, De Chirico, Miro, Tanguy, Klee, copied their works, then incorporated their style into my own. I was also influenced by the abstract expressionists, and later, the work of David Hockney and Herb Jackson.
In my late thirties, I was accepted into graduate school of NCSU School of Design in graphic design. There I studied for two years but left before I finished the graduate degree. I received valuable training and research into the history of graphic design, typography, message content and delivery. I attended during the paradigm shift from mechanical paste-up graphic design to computer design. I followed up by teaching graphic design and typography for nearly 10 years at Meredith College, as well a working as a free lance graphic designer.
Using text, numbers, color and texture, my work depicts a broader, deeper impact of messages, the verbal, emotional, and logical content that informs communication We all are aware that so much more information than mere words passes between people when they interact. I depict this by heavily layering oil pastels on press-on type– Letraset® – the type used before digital typography. I scrape and scour the surface to indicate the fissures in our psyches which often reveal an underlying message.
Earlier works can be viewed on this website, outtanowhere.com.