I am an artist and art educator.  I graduated from UBC Okanagan with a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts and from UBC Vancouver with a Bachelor’s Degree in Education.  Pushing paint with a brush, knife or hand is an experience that has always filled my life and always will.  When I was 5, my very English Grandmother handed me a paint brush.  It was the best way to start a long love of painting.  We would have tea and painting sessions in her garden where we explored realistic landscapes in oil and watercolour paint.  From her, I learned to represent the world around me realistically. Currently I’m working with acrylic paint and collage. I paint abstract and representational work.  My collage pieces use an existing image as a starting point. Both mediums breathe depending on how I’m feeling at the time.  As I study the visceral world of paint and surface in my education and life, I have discovered that the process of painting is as important as the completed work of art. The paint is given a voice. The energy of the medium, expressed in drips and puddles, springs to life without the intervention of a brush or knife.  As a result, my work is neither controlled or contrived.  In my mixed media works, collage is a key element.  I feel that the use of an existing image allows me to build upon and change it’s meaning or context completely.  The image can dictate the feel or theme of the painting; however, I also search for images that will complete the visual and contextual puzzle. My love of nostalgia and irony is evident through out my work. By this, I mean my innate curiousity of the past combined with a contemporary aesthetic and context. Inspiration flows from daily life, from nature, popular culture, fantasy, billboards and a variety of current interests and experiences.