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Bio
I was born in Long Beach, California and have lived there or nearby ever since. At the age of 6, an older woman would sit in the pew behind my family and draw tiny drawings of people for me during services. They were so life-like that it piqued my interesting in wanting to draw like her. The dinning room table become my art room.
Neither of my parents were artists, yet my father had a short-lived career as a painter in high school. My mother loved craft art so there were always materials available to try new things. My mother was a preschool teacher then a stay-at-home mom, while my father was a Foreman in construction.
My mother enrolled me in summer art camps and in high school I enrolled in all of the art classes they would allow me to take.
I didn’t consider being an art teacher until much later in life. I began with drawing and painting on the side, getting into a few shows, then animal rescue, and I've worked countless odd jobs. Most of my jobs revolved around art or animals in some way.
While attending Community College I took many art classes as well as exploring my other interests such as history and archeology. I was accepted into California College of the Arts and majored in Painting/Drawing. This is where I learned about darkroom/film photography. Which developed into another passion of mine. I work mainly in digital photography now but I do enjoy switching back and forth from black and white to color.
Later I went to Oregon State for Wild Life Conservation, but back again to art for my masters in Art Education and my Teaching Credential in Art.
I currently paint in oil and continue to practice photography, so it comes natural that I also integrate the two through collage. I've been teaching visual art for 6 years and I love it.
My work today revolves around my dreams, memories, randomness, and traveling. My landscapes are painted differently than my dreamscapes. I prefer to have my landscapes textured and painted in a particular manner while my dreamscapes are much more time consuming and intimate. My photography and digital collage are carefully selected and altered (if need be) to the way I want them to look.
