"Living out loud!"

Artist Statement

The need to create was always very strong in me. Whether it was painting, playing the piano, writing or modifying my clothing, it was always there.

Creating things is my way to reflect on the world around me and myself. It is my therapy with all the good, bad and ugly and always with intention. Live life like you mean it. The world is a big precious playground and I am playing in it.

Formal Training

After finishing 7 semesters of art school in Germany I lived in Key West on a houseboat with my husband for 10 years making commercial art for 15 years to be sold at the Hemingway Home and Museum, Sloppy Joe's Bar and other retail stores while producing large abstracts at the same time for Lucky Street and Woodenhead Gallery as well as holding a job as a graphic designer on top of that at Solares Hills in Key West. 

I was part of a painter group around Joe Loeber who was a German Expressionist painter and Bauhaus student who was connected to Key West through the book "Key West Transit of Venus,", a collection of poems and paintings by Rosanne Potter that featured his work. He was formerly known as "the last living German Abstract Expressionist".

After he more or less threw me out of his class for not following exactly his lead, my dear artist friend Claudia Richards introduced me to a group of painters around Roberta B. Marks. That's when my journey really started. I lost interest in depicting things in my paintings and instead was looking for a way to bring a feeling across that could not be explained with words. 

I received a grant from the Anne McKee Artists Fund before I moved full time to Granville, TN in 2008.

My husband and I started a leather business and my painting studio transformed into a leather shop which required 100% of my time and energy.

I am now (18 years later) at a state of pre-retirement and able to paint again. I am working on a series of paintings about “People is wished I had met“ as well as abstracts. My process is a play with paints, prints, words, without a plan at first. I prefer to let the painting show me where it wants to go. Then comes the point when I see a direction and the journey begins. There is a push and pull of colors, forms and lines until I cannot add or take away anything. That's when it's finished. Some paintings take hours, others days, weeks and months. But it will tell me when it is finished.