Painting and creating has always been a part of my life but my portfolio developed rapidly after I moved to the heavily forested Pacific Northwest and became a cataloguer for an antique book, map, and print seller.

I began adding a variety of paper to my paintings - mainly Japanese and modern paper. But it was at my new job that I discovered the stash of antique marbled paper sheets meant to be cut down and used as endpaper in old books. The tree theme came naturally to me, especially after all of my exposure to amazing vintage children's books illustrated by true talents such as Arthur Rackham.

More recently, thanks to my beloved father-in-law, a renowned paleobotanist, I've been adding a new material to many of my geological themed pieces - coal ball peels. What on earth is that, you ask? In a nutshell, a coal ball is a round accumulation of fossilized plant material from approximately 300 million years ago. My father-in-law used thin slices of these balls for research purposes. Upon seeing how I was using marbled paper to represent the earth's strata he suggested using the real thing.

If you buy an original painting from me be sure to read the details. Yours might include an actual fossil.