Art2Die4

My Story

 

I have been taking black and white photos for many years. Inspired by the beauty of the Big Sur Coastline while living in California, I began experimenting with new techniques including hand tinting to create new effects on canvas and to show a different point of view in my art work.

 

I displayed much of my work along the famed Cannery Row in Monterey and in art shows in the Carmel area before moving to Richmond, Virginia. As a native of the area the history of Virginia had always intrigued me, so I began gathering hsitoric photos from old archives, restoring them and then hand tinting them. Not only did I get "hooked" on the images I found, but so did my customers. The result has been displaying them in art shows all over Virginia and in local galleries. My collection of primarily Richmond photos has now grown to include the Civil War, Northern Virginia, the rural South, water scenes, Native Americans and much much more.

 

"As I began collecting these images women began to emerge in so many different areas from the women spies of the Civil War, rural scenes of women working in the fields, to women in professions long ago that we have forgotten. They are also in sports events we thought were strictly a "man's world" long ago. I decided we needed to celebrate these women. We needed to celebrate where we had been and the things we had accomplished."

 

For more than a year, I gathered women's photos to put together a special show that opened in a local gallery in Richmond. The show included 40 photos of ordinary women doing extraordinary things. "While I could not resist picking the Civil War Spies, I really concentrated my collection on women we had not heard about. I felt we needed to celebrate our ordinary lives in an extraordinary way."

 

"I think we forget the importance of women in sculpting our society -- its feelings, emotions, its passion and beauty -- and how influential this has been in all areas of the world as we know it today. Whether in front of the crowd marching for the right to vote, to working in the coal mines, on the railroad and struggling in the rural areas to keep family together, it is important to remember how vital this energy is so that we can celebrate ourselves no matter where we are or what we are doing. It's only when we can celebrate our past that we can build a brighter more beautiful future!"

 

Currently I show my work in about 26 juried shows a year now covering five states and display my work in several galleries.