I am a Native of the South, born in Enterprise, Alabama.  However, I was raised in the beautiful Pacific Northwest in Nampa, Idaho.  Throughout junior high and high school art was a central part of my life.  Upon graduating from high school, I allowed this passion to lay dormant for nearly ten years.  In 1999, I graduated from Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama, where I majored in English and Theatre.
 

I settled in Georgia in 2001 and really enjoy living in the metro-Atlanta City of Marietta. 
 
 

Over a period of four years, I have donated original portraits of Country Music celebrities to Rhubarb Jones’s Celebrity Golf Classic to benefit the Georgia Chapter of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.  Those donated pieces have raised a total of $35,000 at the annual Live Auction for the Benefit.

When I am not drawing portraits commissioned by clients, I enjoy cooking, quality time with friends and family, and a great deal of my leisure time is spent reading, reflective of my life-long love affair with books.  I also enjoy spending time exploring ideas for original works of art other than portrait work.
 
 

I think every creative act, whether it’s drawing or painting, writing books, poetry or songwriting, or simply creating or passing on a favorite family recipe, is each in its own way an act of defiance, a rebellion against time and our own mortality.  It is a hopeful act of staking a claim in the universe that says, “I am here” and “I was here” in hope that it will remain once we’re gone.

I find the creative process to be exciting and frustrating, exhilarating and draining, filled with exuberant joy and sober acceptance.  It is an expression of grace at work in my life and I am humbled by the beauty it allows me to see in others and in the world around me.  I am thrilled by its power to transform the mundane into the majestic. 

I am not a fan of any kind of elitist attitude by which art becomes Art and is deemed to be the province of a select few, an inner circle of those who “know” about such things.  This is merely an attempt, all too frequently successful, on the part of a few to profit off the insecurities of the many.  I believe that art is everywhere, if you can choose to see it, and that it is for everyone to experience. 

When I am paying attention to what it attempts to show me, art makes my life a far richer and more deeply satisfying experience than I know how to express.  It is the ultimate YES! to life and living.  It helps me to be present for each moment of my life.  And the present is the only place I need to be.