My Art
I paint aliveness — abstract paintings using eclectic media, inspired by nature and celebrating the beauty and mystery of life.
Each canvas is an invitation. Collaborating with intuition and discipline, I embrace the unexpected and respond with intention. I add, take away, step away. Inhale. Push color, build texture, pay attention. Exhale. And so, the process goes, constructing and deconstructing until passages that feel immediate share space with moments once hidden, again revealed. Something familiar appears, though not fully understood.
Looking at my paintings from across the room, you may recall flowers—organic forms blossoming alongside gestures that suggest stem, root, or vine. Or maybe you're drawn to what the paint is doing: fragments appearing and disappearing within layers, the drips, splatters, and scratches that reveal my hand. Each painting invites your eye to wander, return, and discover again.
Consider the flower. From a little seed life unfolds. Dormant, we see no life. Yet deep in the ground it is awakened and nourished. Roots take hold; shoots emerge. When its season comes, a blossom bursts into color.
I see these same rhythms in our own lives, where what appears to be an ending becomes the ground from which new life grows. Relationships, experiences, and memories—cherished and heartbreaking—remain, becoming part of who we are in ways we never fully understand. These fragments are forming the beautiful fullness of now.
Each bloom, just as each breath of aliveness, is a gift from the first Artist, God, who created out of love.
“Flowers are allegories of consciousness.” — Novalis, Fragment 284
“Paintings are allegories of aliveness.” — Ellen Hathaway
My Beloved spoke and said to me, “Arise, my darling, my beautiful one, and come away with me.”
Song of Solomon 2:10
My Story
I grew up in a small town on the banks of the Pamlico River in Eastern North Carolina where Camellias bloom in winter. Along with this picture in my mind, one of my first memories is enjoying the feel of scratching a pin into our wood windowsills.
This became my first awareness that we can respond to indescribable sensations by making beautiful marks with our hands.
My mother fanned this flame giving me an art box filled with colorful paint. My father suggested pursuing art in college. They understood this passion before I.
Fearing the vulnerability of exposing my “sanctum” I didn’t major in art. With undergraduate degrees from Saint Mary’s College and UNC-CH, and a graduate degree from UVA, I worked in broadcast sales then taught kindergarten. I chose to stay home when our first daughter was born.
Life as expected. Not an ending but a new beginning.
Within a span of twenty-four months, my father died of cancer and our two daughters were born. In two more years I admitted I was powerless over the alcohol I’d become accustomed to gloss bouts of depression and anxiety. God’s love gave me hope, transforming my chaos and confusion into promise and renewal. This grace gives me aliveness: the freedom to love, forgive, and create.
It was during this season that my desire to draw and paint reawakened. The events of 9/11 ignited my long-ignored passion for painting. Today I’m grateful for relationships with those who own my paintings, as well as those who help me share them. My work is found in private and public collections throughout the US.
Living in Raleigh with my husband and blessed with our daughters’ growing families, I paint out of my Gateway Studio. It’s a space where through painting I connect with God, myself and others.
Photo by Doug Pitts