Background

At the behest of my husband, I started teaching myself watercolors in 2005. I really enjoyed the process and was learning quickly. But what did I want to paint? What would people want? I feel like kind of a fraud for this part of the story but I'm sharing it anyway... I decided to paint endangered species because I thought that having a cause backing what I was doing would provide a built in collector base... it didn't quite work that way.

What actually happened was that I immersed myself in the subject matter and fell in love with wildlife, with their plight and the need to paint them and bring them to everyone's attention.

I went on to work with the St. Louis Zoo at the height of the pandemic for their annual fundraiser "Bowling for Rhinos." This fundraiser is actually a nationwide event that is put on by the various Zookeeper Associations at zoos across the nation. it is actually a night of bowling and silent auctions. Which didn't quite work with the pandemic. I managed to convert their fundraiser to an online silent auction and tapped a wonderful community of artists that I belong to and had over 20 artists donating multiple pieces. I went live with the zoo and painted my donation. The physical portion of the event had to be cancelled due to the pandemic but the zoo was still able to raise money with the online auction

Later in the year, I was contacted by the LA Zoo to do a similar live painting for a donation to their Beastly Ball.

Today I don't limit myself to just the endangered species but also paint all wildlife and have actually expanded into doing people and fantasy and whatever else triggers me to be creative, but my underlying love for wildlife still makes its way into the majority of my work.