For me, painting is a practice, a perspective on life. Each new piece presents a chance for optimism. This is why I paint and what I hope to convey.

I began to seriously paint while I was a graduate student in American politics and political thought at UC Berkeley. An architect friend introduced me to tube watercolors. With other architect types, in 1979, we started the Sunday Afternoon Watercolor Society, painting to record and commemorate places that were about to be changed in some way.

A Pisces by birth and inclination, I was smitten with watercolor from the start. My first workshop was with George Post. We painted on location in Mendocino, with big brush and transparent and opaque paints, including black for calligraphy. Living in San Francisco, I took painting and drawing classes at the old SF Art Institute, figure drawing in Golden Gate Park and more workshops.

While my repertoire has evolved to include mixed media, all the paints I use are water -soluble. So much depends on water. I love being in it, weightless and free, letting go. Likewise, as a painting medium, I feel that water has the ability to transport color across paper in seemingly infinite ways. There are oceans of possibilities for illuminating the many subjects I love to paint, elements of the natural world, buildings and even ideas.

Fulfilling a dream to join the North Coast artist community, in 1998 my husband and I moved full time to "heaven" on Navarro Ridge. When we built our three-story studio there, called "High Point of View," my painting life fundamentally changed. Productive rain or shine, I took my painting inside, literally and metaphorically. Here, I had space and time to develop paintings in my own way, a freedom to explore with imagination and the paint it self.

Today I teach painting instead of political theory at local art centers and in my studio. I In my view, politics and art are both concerned with striking a balance between chaos (or freedom) and order (or stability). Beginning a painting with a wet ground, letting paint flow as it will, then developing the piece with strong shapes and values …if my paintings exemplify both freedom and unity, I am pleased.

My work has been exhibited at the William Zimmer Gallery, Artists Cooperative of Mendocino, local art centers, California College of the Arts, California Oak Foundation, California Wildlife Foundation and Yosemite Museum Gallery. My paintings have earned national and local awards. And, I had the pleasure of painting as an Artist-in-Residence at Yosemite National Park.