I am an artist, portrait painter and teacher who is endlessly fascinated by the human body in all of its intricacy, subtlety, grace and vulnerability. I am an observer of light and shadow, both literal and metaphorical.

I make art…

…for the brave but wary.
…for the wounded but walking.
…for the courageous yet jaded.
…for the people who want to feel more at …home in their bodies.
…for the recovering perfectionists making …their peace with the mess.
…for the survivors figuring out how to thrive.
…to comfort, to nourish.
…to shine light into the places most people are …uncomfortable looking at.
…to face the darkness.
…to embrace the light.
…to be honest with myself.
…to be honest with each other.
…for the messiness that is life: fragile/strong/broken/healed
…to honour your journey, whatever that is.

I make art to honour you. Your body. Your strength. Your wounds. Your scars. Your triumphs.

How I got here

Growing up, I wanted to be everything from a paleontologist to a brain surgeon to a therapist, with a large helping of ballerina. Somehow, I found a way to merge all my loves: I spend a lot of my time thinking about bones, about how our bodies are put together and how they move, and how our emotions and experiences live in our bodies and how we can heal.

The things I care about as an artist are also my own story: chronic illness and pain, depression, anxiety and PTSD, childhood trauma and abuse. My left tibia was recently reconstructed with a healthy dose of titanium after a dramatic break in 2019. I spent most of my teen years ill and bedridden, not even graduating high school until I was 20. I was divorced from an 11 year relationship before my 30th birthday. My body and spirit are dinged, dented and scarred. I bring all of this to every piece of art I make.

Even my cat is elderly and arthritic with a missing left foreleg, several missing teeth and a funky right eye.

I specialize in being knocked down and getting back up. Stubborn is my only superpower.

And yet there is so much beauty in these places in our lives. It’s where the grace, the compassion, the transformation, the metamorphosis happen. I walk the line between the light and the dark. The messiness of life no longer scares me (for too long, at least).

These are the things that feed my work: whether I am witnessing and honouring the honesty and rawness of someone’s body and the way their story is written on their skin, or painting someone’s portrait to help them honour their own journey, or making little still life paintings that nourish and comfort for the days that are hard – it’s about experiencing the messiness that is life with all of the grace we can muster.