Painting has always been relaxing and at the same time an exciting activity for me. My favorite subjects to paint are the places I know and love. The Pacific Northwest offers endless vistas of natural beauty. The coast, western foothills, mountains, and the desert of central Oregon offer an always changing environment that provides the perfect landscape subject. My paintings reflect my emotional and spiritual response to my natural surroundings.

Although I've worked in many mediums–oils, acrylic, watercolor and colored pencil–pastels are my medium of choice. They can be layered to achieve wonderful optical mixes. I find them to be the best fit for me to explore light, color and texture on paper.

I paint because I have a passion for it and the natural beauty around me. I feel so fortunate to be able to translate my joy in art into a career. Thank you to all my family, friends and patrons who have encouraged me and helped to make this happen.

All about Pastels

Pastel painting is enjoying a renaissance in artistic and public popularity after a long period of neglect. Today works in pastel command some of the highest prices for contemporary art. Considered one of the purest of painting mediums, pastel is as colorful and vigorous as any method of painting.

The challenge and appeal of pastel lie in its pure, vibrant colors, diverse texture and its enduring freshness and immediacy. Pastels are not Chalk. They are pure pigment, the same used in making all fine art paints. It is the most permanent of all mediums when applied to conservation grounds and properly framed. Pastel has no liquid binder that may fade, yellow, crack, or blister with time or exposure to light (as with other mediums).

Pastel artworks are created by stroking sticks of dry pigment across an abrasive ground designed for pastel, imbedding color in the “tooth” of the ground. If the ground is completely covered with pigment in a painterly fashion, the work is considered a pastel painting; leaving much of the ground exposed produces a pastel drawing.

Some of history’s most noted painters used pastels with lasting results. Leonardo da Vinci and his contemporaries employed red pastels for their figure studies. Modern pastel, as a painting medium in its own right, can be traced back to the 18th century painters Jean-E’tienne Liotard, Quenton de La Tour and Rosalba Carrier. Pastels more than 200 years old are as bright and fresh today as they were the day they were painted.  Pastel came into its own in the mid to late 19th century with the advent of the Impressionists and Post Impressionists. Such great artists as Edgar Degas, William Merrit Chase and Mary Stevenson Cassatt from that era, and more recently, such well known artists as Daniel Green, Sally Strand, Albert Handell, Jane Lund, Douglas Dawson, Dianah Randolph, Deberah Deichler and Richard Pionck have employed pastel with marvelous results.