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My Art

I studied art at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago where I earned my BFA in 2007. My primary studio concentration was in painting and drawing. My medium of choice was oils and my style tended toward a modernist aesthetic. My paintings from that period have been displayed in galleries and private collections across the United States.

Over the course of my career, I started to shift my perspective. Teaching elementary art has informed my own art-making practice in a number of ways. In developing a curriculum to address the needs of diverse learners, I was forced to expand my knowledge base giving me inspiration from different styles and movements. Teaching children and having my own children has helped me to re-connect with art seeing things through the lens of a child. I started to approach work more in the way that I did when I first started making art- unabashedly taking elements from whatever I saw that I thought looked cool. I could prattle on about "the democratizing effect of synthesizing disparate influences in a direct manner eschewing the esoteric nature of modernist abstraction," but I prefer to simply say I do what I like and hope others like it too. I try to make work that my kids can enjoy and I have started making limited edition prints (pigment based inks on archival, acid free paper usually in runs of 50) all priced at a point that is affordable for the average person. My current practice mixes digital and traditional media. Typically I will sketch on paper then transfer the drawing to an iPad using photographs I take (often of my paintings) of various colors, textures, and patterns. I  digitally collage and hand draw over the top then print on museum grade paper. Every print is hand signed and numbered.

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