I’m a mixed-media artist based just outside
Chicago, creating portrait-driven work that explores liberation, imagination,
resilience, and the emotional landscapes we carry. After a global career in
science, I returned to art with a renewed commitment to storytelling, social
consciousness, and creating work that honors the complexities of everyday
people. My current focus is a growing body of multimedia portraits
that combine collage and oil paint. These works begin
with layers of paper that hold images, textures, and fragments of history and that become the
foundation for the painted figure. I build from the inside out, letting torn
edges and unexpected color shape the emotional terrain of
each portrait before adding the final layers of paint. The process mirrors the
themes at the core of the project: how we hold memory, how identity is built,
how beauty and struggle coexist, and how we imagine ourselves into futures not
yet visible.
I’m most inspired by the people who anchor and transcend
this moment; folks who carry joy, grief, resistance, softness, and possibility
all at once. My portraits often depict people whose presence pushes me to
reckon with power, culture, and the worlds we are building together. Even when
the subject is quiet or contemplative, there’s always an undercurrent of
energy—gestural lines, bold color shifts, and layered texture that trace the
movement between inner world and outer world.
My collage-driven foundational work laid the groundwork for
this new direction, teaching me how to let materials guide the story and how to
build depth through accumulation. My broader studio practice, focused on oil paintings
ranging from cityscapes to still lifes to experimental abstraction, continues to
inform my portrait work, especially in my use of color, contrast, and
atmospheric tension. Earlier collections from my acrylic years now live as a
record of where I began, and as reminders of how far this practice has evolved.
Recently, pieces like In Her Light, The Time is Always Now, and Awakening have marked turning points in my creative
voice—each blending detailed realism with expressive abstraction, and each
rooted in the idea that portraits can be both mirrors and portals.
I share my process and reflections through my newsletter,
YouTube, and social media channels (access all my platforms here). And you can often find me guiding visitors
through the Art Institute of Chicago, where art, history, and human stories
inform nearly everything I create. My work is also shaped by my commitment to
antiracism, abolition and social justice—threads that run through both my
studio practice and my community work.
Thanks for being here. I’m grateful to share this unfolding portrait journey with you.
