"How can I explain nature in all its glory?
I can't. So I paint it. Growing up in the country with unbounded freedom to explore gave me a magnificent reverence for life and all things natural and beautiful. As a child, I spent hours down at the creek next to my house, imaging and dreaming.

Huge beds of iris and poppies were my playground. I entertained myself among peach trees and arbors of climbing roses, helped my grandfather plant beans and cabbages and picked fresh pomegranates straight off the tree. Walking home from school through fields of blanketflowers and wild grasses, I was never in a hurry. Nature was always a beautiful mystery to me.

As an adult, I continue my love of nature in my painting. I take what's real, mix it with whimsical imagination and tweak it with color. I paint rich, passionate and glowing images of skies, people, villages and flowers of the Southwest. My paintings depict a mystical northern New Mexico village of my own imagination; a simpler time and place, filled with communal beauty and spirituality. And flowers!

I portray a loving Southwestern people, hidden from the outside world; not meaning to be seen; living, working and enjoying life together. My flowers, on the other hand, strive to be noticed and often compete for attention! I want everyone who sees my paintings to feel a love and warmth for the simpler time and place I have created.

I want viewers to feel transported to my mystical canyon hideaway. Each time I begin a piece, I have a vivid memory of my grandmother and I, bending over the earth in our wild and wonderful garden by the creek, seeding and harvesting, and I transfer our love of the land and nature to the paintings I make of the flora, fauna mystical people and places of the Southwest."