About Me

The life experiences, people and landscapes that have influenced me in my art are my grandmother, where I come from, my Blackfoot Indian heritage, and having what I call a blended identity.

 Until the age of four I lived with my family of origin on the reservation and in the projects. My father was Blackfoot and my mother was white. My Grandmother and aunts and uncles lived close by. When I was four our family disintegrated. Us five children were given to others and my family split up. My two older sisters and I went to live in the suburbs with a middle class family and my younger brother and sister moved to the mountains with another family. Although I don’t remember much of the move I often think it must have been like waking up on another planet with everything familiar gone and everything else different. We were lucky in that we remained close to our Grandmother and father, traveling often to Montana to spend summers and school breaks with them.

Those life experiences shaped me and continue to inform and inspire my work.

Artist Statement

When I begin a painting I begin a journey and I have no idea where I’ll end up. The journey is a quiet, solitary inner journey. It starts with a phrase, a place, a memory or a feeling. My process becomes a meditation, an offering of the sacred.

I begin by laying down multiple layers of contrasting color. Oil paint mixed with cold wax for body and depth. I begin to add or subtract by adding more layers or subtracting, scratching, or gouging out areas of color. I add marks, texture, color and line to tell this particular story. Texture consists of mementoes of bones, hair, dirt, leaves, letters or bits of insects. Mark making could be inspired by a satellite image, a poetic phrase or it could angry slashes or soft lines. At times my work is like an animal hide that is soft and worn and shows the beauty of the scar. At other times I’m reducing by excavating to show what lies beneath and or adding to create typography.

My work is my visual language that represents my history. I offer it to the viewer to have their own experience.