I am an artist, art educator and landscape designer. My artistic practice is centered in the observational drawing and painting of botanical and scientific subjects, as well as, urban landscapes. A professional background in city planning and landscape design informs my artwork.

Botanical art projects and landscape painting offer endless subjects to explore my curiosities about nature, ecology, land use and community.

My botanical studies include flowers, pears, bark, lichen, and much more. I love the aspect of focused direct observational drawing and painting that I experience in my botanical work.

In landscape and plein air painting, I am particularly fascinated by locations of convergence, disruption and possibility, such as the Hoosic River in North Adams, MA.

The Hoosic River flows through three states: Massachusetts, New York and Vermont, all within the Hoosic River Watershed. The river is well-known for its wonderful fishing, boating and recreational assets.

As a board member of the non-profit Hoosic River Revival, in North Adams, MA, I am working to revitalize and re-envision the Hoosic River as a safer, ecologically supported and recreational asset for the city.

I created a series of paintings of the aging concrete flood control chutes that have managed dangerous flooding of the river in North Adams for over 70 years. These chutes are now considered to be an outdated infrastructure engineering strategy. The chutes are currently structurally failing in several locations, and so, the city government and HRR together, are seeking and winning funding for exploring �green infrastructure� alternatives to the chutes which will be safe in floods, accessible and support nature.

I created these paintings to represent the chutes as architectural elements and aim to demonstrate how the river �experiences� the channels. In my paintings, I incorporate relevant but abstracted elements of the responding built environment. Edges of paintings are open and trees become negative spaces to suggest the long history of the former mill town, as well as, the future opportunities awaiting a small city which is constantly reinventing itself.

In addition to my painting and drawing work, I teach art and design classes online and in person at several locations: New Art Center (Newton, Massachusetts), Washtenaw Community College (Ann Arbor, Michigan), and Southern Vermont Arts Center (Manchester, Vermont).