I began my journey with watercolor as a purist. I used no white nor black and gravitated toward mostly transparent colors. I love to layer my colors and see through to the original layers. I enjoy scrubbing back to reveal the life underneath. As I moved into playing with texture, I loved breaking up the colors/light into smaller and smaller fragments. Increasingly my watercolors are becoming combined with other media as I explore the contrast of opaque acrylics against the transparent watercolor or the repulsion of watercolor to oil pastel….which moves me to mixed-media work. I still often return to pure watercolor and it remains a joy. see watercolor gallery>>

Once I discovered the mixing of acrylic with watercolor, I was doomed to eternal play with new media. I am currently finding that my work may cry out for an oil pastel line, or a watercrayon or pencil line or the use of inks or even the introduction of some collage. I am still in love with layers and often use a matt medium isolation coat between layers as I thickly build the surface. Now when I scrape through the present layer to reveal the past, it takes more energy but results in a more coherent work as the past and the present come together to create a new work. see mixed media gallery>>

My collage papers are produced using artist quality craft paper which I paint, marble, splatter or stamp using either watercolor or acrylic paints. Some are “altered papers”, a result of using an organic cleaning product, Citrasolve, on old magazines which are printed on clay based paper. Some papers are “found papers” which I recycle into my art. All papers are adhered and encased in an archival medium. When they are not mounted under glass, they are coated with a UV resistant varnish. see collage gallery>>

Each year Sandra Lambert and I begin two (2) new paintings on a half sheet of watercolor paper. The sheet is divided into multiple shapes and each shape is assigned to one of us respecting the rule that one person is not given two shapes next to each other; i.e. that Sandra is assigned all shapes that border my shapes and vise versa. We each start a shape on one piece of paper and then exchange papers. We enjoy the challenge of working off of each other, of matching colors and shapes, lines and patterns and of surprising each other when we exchange our work. We hope to achieve a coherent result but at the same time we often invent challenges to amuse the other and not make it too easy. see collaborative gallery>>