About the artist

I was born and raised in a flat corner of southern Illinois — cornfields to the horizon, and not one flicker of hope in sight. I was the sensitive, creative kid, the strange one, the one who tried to fit into the land around me and never quite did. I found relief in coloring books, sketchpads, the glow of the television, as three women — my mother, my aunt, my grandmother — raised me.

As far as childhood goes, much of it is blocked out. I stare into the distance within myself, and there’s a black void. The good, and the bad, all of it black. I draw everything on top of that.

Home was heavier than a child should have to carry. My father was absent, but his hands were rarely quiet. He left marks that never faded, and the consequences of being his son have rippled on through the length of my lifetime. They swirl around in my body, and crash as a wave breaking through my face as Tourette’s. Embarassing, and dad loved to make fun of me for it. He loved anything that wasn’t me. My love for drawing and coloring began back then. My reason for it flourished.

By the time teenage years appeared, art became my escape hatch. My pressure valve. My refuge. By high school, the art room wasn't a classroom anymore — it was a hiding place with good lighting. Surrealism was my native tongue. A language built for secrets, for dreamscapes, for worlds where I finally got to write the rules. In the world outside, things happened to me. On the canvas, I happened to things. And in the way that things unfolded, I havn’t seen my dad since I was 15.

For over twenty years, painting has been teaching me how to be human — one honest brushstroke at a time. It taught me how to feel things all the way through, and how to give shape to emotions that never had names. The kind that feel like my heart is held by raven talons. The ones that live low in the chest and refuse to come out as words.

I learned to treat the canvas like a friend I trust completely. No pretending. No staying inside the lines. No plan drawn ahead of the feeling. Just a place to spill what needed spilling, and wander the unlit wilderness of myself without a flashlight to do it.

My hands move on instinct now, not foresight. I feel my way through a painting rather than think my way through it — and there is a whole world of difference between the two. Life has always made more sense to me in surreal images: strange, layered pictures that hold more truth than any tidy explanation could. That is how I translate the tangled, beautiful language of being alive — especially its loudest griefs, and the love that outlives the person who gave it.

Every piece I made is a paper trail back to myself, though never the whole map. Think of my body of work as different trails through wilderness — each picture a place I stood, a fire I sat beside, a weight I carried for a while before setting it down. My scars run through every brushstroke. Actual wounds on display. The paintings hold my heaviest years, so I can move on with my life. Kind of a proof that I walked through the fire and came out the other side. I’m happy to be here.

Wolves, Wilderness, and What Keeps a Heart Online

In my twenties I learned that becoming whole takes more than making art alone in my bedroom. Writing found me. Photography found me. And then the exploring the outer wilderness found me, in that bone-deep way that makes you wonder how you ever lived without it.

My husky, Levi, came too — equal parts wolf, philosopher, and full-time drama queen. He is my studio assistant and adventure companion, reviewing every piece with the withering gaze of someone who has opinions, delivered mostly through theatrical sighing, and he has never once been wrong about when it's time to stop working and go outside.

Together we've slept beside fires under mountain skies, wind moving through the pines, owls and coyotes trading verses in the dark. Those nights have healed parts of me no paintbrush ever reached. Mountains don't perform. Rivers don't pretend. I never had to stand next to an Old Pine and be edited. I never had to hide my shadows as I gazed into the setting sun lighting up both worlds over the Pacific. There is something clarifying about spending time around things that have no interest in critizing you — and I've built my whole creative life around chasing that particular kind of honesty, acceptance, and belonging.