I was born in Plymouth, England, and enjoyed art as a child thanks to the patient instruction and creative projects of my mother. An artist herself and a mother to three daughters she realized that if she wanted to find the time to paint, it was best to put a paintbrush and paints in our hands and let us paint the same subject she was painting. We loved it!

In high school I completed a series of architectural drawings of historic homes that was published and sold to raise money for our town's Historical Society. That's when I started to gain confidence in my abilities.

At Duke University

I double-majored in visual art and art history and minored in French.

I was fortunate to study painting under Anya Belkina, became the gallery assistant for the Durham artist, Nancy Tuttle-May, who encouraged and inspired me and also interned at the Duke University Museum of Art.

Another important influence on my work was the artist Giorgio DeChirico and his only pupil, Gerard Tempest. While co-curating an exhibition of the work of Giorgio DeChirico from the collection of the artist Gerard Tempest, I was lucky enough to interview Tempest and he granted me a critique of my work, the lessons of which I still remember!

One of the more exciting internships I experienced in college was a semester at The Project, a New York gallery representing artists such as Julie Mehretu, Kim Sooja and Art Domantay. These experiences, combined with the experience of living in New York through the fall of 2001 have greatly influenced the direction of my work.

I soon returned to New York to earn a masters degree in fine arts at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, where I studied painting under Gerald Hayes and Jos A. Smith, artists whose work I greatly admire.

With varied interests in both the practice of painting and the study of the history of painting, I have found common ground in independent research of the history of color theory and continue to enjoy my journey as an artist.