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The earliest drawing I can remember doing was of a girl on my bedroom wall. I think I was old
enough to know better but I didn’t get in trouble. In fact, my parents always supported my love
of art. I graduated from the School of Art at East Carolina University with a BFA in painting
and a double minor in figure drawing and commercial design. About a year later, I headed to the
Outer Banks and it’s been my home ever since.
Once here, I was chosen for an Artist in Residence program. This was a wonderful program
that allowed Dare County to use artists in any capacity that they had a need for. So the
county put me to work doing advertising, murals and teaching. I especially enjoyed
doing large murals. My next employment was as an illustrator of children’s books and
educational materials for Dare County Schools. This was a unique project titled “Project Cape.”
The subject was the land and ocean life of our beautiful Outer Banks. The children’s books
were also available to the public and sold out. After that, I was asked to teach art in the
Dare County Schools which I did for a few years. There was no money in our school system
for an art teacher at that time and so my salary came from the PTA. I continued to produce
illustrations for publications, paint and teach privately to the extent possible while my
husband and I raised our four children, did volunteer work and ran a business.
I now enjoy painting in “plein air” (painting outside.) The French Impressionist were the first
to begin painting out of the studio in the open air, and by doing so, they have increased
the knowledge of color. Like a larger vocabulary can help one to express thoughts and feelings,
seeing the right relationships of colors will do the same for a painter. So to me, art is an ongoing
endeavor of learning, especially learning to see the color. For that I need to be outside.
Light gives us color and color gives us form. And therefore my greatest inspiration
is creation itself. After all, appreciating beauty in nature is an inherited quality we
all have. Thus I hope you will enjoy my oil paintings that depict the Outer Banks’
landscapes with its ocean, dunes, cottages, boats, piers and people (and a few from my
travels.) One last thought, I once read that a wall without a picture
is like a room without a window. I so agree with that and I trust you do too.