I was a dreamy child lost in my own world of imagination, and my concerned parents brought me to New York to see a therapist to make sure I was alright. Little did they know they were about to gift me with my calling. That evening they took me to see “My Fair Lady” and I found a home for my imagination. I came home and to date if you ask me about that trip I could not say a thing about NY but I can tell you everything about the play. So, I came home inspired, dreamy eyed and wrote my own play called “The Stolen Emerald”. I expertly directed this play with my siblings and myself as the cast and performing it in our driveway for an audience who had to pay 10 cents a ticket. I clearly wasn’t in it for the fortune. Soon enough I found my way to the stage and as fate would have it was cast to play Eliza Dolittle in “My Fair Lady” for the school production. And the journey began…

I found my way to New York to pursue my artistic career as an actor. This is not the New York of today, this was in the New York of seventies where you had to be strong, gritty and bold to survive. Things one does for their dreams! Fate was smiling at me, I worked a lot and was blessed with the love from media and audiences. Within 2 years my tales had reached the fairy tale world of California and I found myself holding a contract for Universal Studios shortly after. It was about to get real.

Life in California was a whirlwind, an exciting decade of my life had begun. I did not look back and kept up with the system the structure and the work. As most actresses of my time I had my prime time and then was being sidelined for younger actresses, I knew my time and imagination needed a new context. I decided to gracefully exit the stage and found my way to paint brushes.

Being on set and being in studio were two entirely different experiences. I was used to having creative chaos around me but now I had to create in silence. Me and my imagination, the only two inhabitants of my creative journey. Though I had given up storytelling on stage and screen, storytelling had not given up on me. Stories wanted to be told, with every stroke of my paint brushes, with every speck of color I added on that blank canvas stories were pouring out. I could not just see a face, I saw what was behind those eyes, I saw a life that was lived and etched on that face. It was a delicate dance of what I saw and what my soul connected with.

My paintings are about the discovery of self  and that becomes the extension of the narrative  in  my  work. I often paint very fast , hoping to catch that first moment of discovery .  My painting   is a play between loosing control and gaining control.  It is about seeing myself in others and being changed by that experience  when I paint .   My discovery emerges  from live models . I love looking  between the pose . That is often when the narrative begins as I wipe and scrape  and beg  for the  soul of the work. I am trying to get better at listening to the paintings . I often sit in my studio for hours  looking and listening . I dim the lights to receive the dream  I often go back into a painting years later  and change  them as I change .  My work is  perceptual rather than realistic . It is about what I discover below the surface