About Me

I was born in 1970 and raised between Asheville and Raleigh, North Carolina. My husband and I moved our family of four from Denver, Colorado to Dublin, Ireland in 2020.

I'm related to American realist painter, Thomas Eakins (1844-1916), and my paternal grandmother was also an artist who gave private lessons. An aunt once told me that my great-grandfather, George, visited his famous cousin’s art studio on Mount Vernon Street in Philadelphia, whereas Thomas’s advice had been to choose between family life or art, suggesting one can't successfully achieve both. My great-grandfather chose family, but his interest in being an artist never eased and was passed onto his daughter, her children, and then to me. 

I first attended the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan and pursued fashion design. I have been a maker of clothing and craft since childhood when my mother and grandmother taught me to sew. Eventually I left F.I.T. and changed my major to psychology, earning a master’s degree in Counselor Education/Educational Psychology. Higher education was valued and encouraged in my family. Despite having acquired degrees in psychology, however, I never stopped being a maker or artist. It is my bloodline, after all. For several years, I spent my days as a therapist, and my evenings as a maker or painter, a table top easel always displaying a painting in progress, a sewing machine beside that. 

I began painting full-time five years ago, deciding to solely focus on this passion. Designing clothes had begun to feel repetitive and the helping profession had never been my primary interest. But this collective experience developed my artistic focus, my paintings now a relationship between what I interpret during brief encounters, and a curiosity of what others might see if I put that encounter in paint. They're literally the footpath of my life, depictions of where I've traveled and who I've met along the way, a crafted record of interesting people caught in fleeting moments, sometimes a glimpse into their psyche for the viewer to analyze or relate. My art represents collective connectedness, which seems a current deficit in the world. I want my art to serve as a reminder of the responsibility we have to each other. We need to slow down and pay attention to each other, to catch the tiny details that make each of us unique and worth knowing.