My California roots go back three generations: one set of grandparents built their home in Berkeley and survived the 1906 earthquake and the other set of grandparents farmed in Sonoma County until the 1960s. Mom told stories of the day the Golden Gate Bridge opened for the first time (and the promise that a toll charge was only temporary!) and Dad inspected the Bart tube under the Bay before the first train ran. These were the days when Hwy 101 ran freely (except for train stops and traffic lights in San Rafael) and the hills and open coastal lands of Marin County called with their undeveloped beauty. It is this magic that defines the northern California that I seek to preserve through my plein air paintings.
Before settling into my life as a plein air artist, I was a product designer with
Broderbund Software; a Senior Editor at Addison Wesley Publishing Company; and
a Curriculum Writer for various publishing houses and for the State of California. I graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz and San Francisco State University, with Bachelor of
Arts degrees in Biology and Liberal Studies, and a Master of Arts Degree in
Education. During my 7 years in college, I was always enrolled in one art class or another, but it took me an additional 15 years to quit my day job and actually pursue my dream. I've been fortunate enough to paint with some of the great modern plein air masters, including Wolf Kahn, Ken Auster, Tim Horn, Skip Whitcomb, Randall Sexton, Camille Przewodek, and Kim Lordier. I am a member of Oil Painters of America, The California Art Club, The Arts Council of Sonoma County, The Sebastopol Center for the Arts, The Marin Arts Council, and currently serve on the Board of the Sonoma County Museum.
You
can find my paintings on permanent exhibit at my studio in the Backstreet
Gallery in the Arts District of Santa Rosa, Studio 333 in Sausalito, California, and the Russian River
Gallery in Guerneville, CA. Other 2010 venues include the Upstairs Gallery in
Healdsburg, Sonoma County Arts Council Gallery, Graton Gallery, ARTrails Open
Studios, Marin Open Studios, "Winterblast" in the Arts District of Santa Rosa, and the
Sebastopol Center for the Arts.
Third Generation Northern Californian