"Mrs. Percell, my next door neighbor and friend from before I can remember, painted Bob Ross Landscapes. Her house, yellow siding next to my red brick, had a dark front room filled with clocks you had to wind, pictures of Jesus, and canvases. These were unfinished, with bits of white glaring through the layers of Van Dyke Brown, and Sap Green. The smell of this room was a strong mixture of wet oil pa;lont and turpentine, a smell I still love today.

I have begun to wonder if Mrs. Percell and her paintings were the beginning of my artistic inclination. I did not actually paint until many years after her death, when in high school I was able to study with a local artist. By this time, I had gone through the gamut of possible job options, including Docton by day/Painter at night, Veterinarian, Businesswomoan, Writrer. I found myself however, returning to, and needing, the main of Art.

I began to look seriously at art schools with the intention of pursuing a career as and artist. By my sophomore year, after transferring from a liberal arts college, with what I had thought of as an extensive arts program, to Massachusetts College of Art, I was determined and sure of what I was to become. At Mass Art, I was able to center myself and develop the habits that will aid me in continuing my pursuit in a world that is harder, harsher and less supportive the art school itself.

Since graduating Massachusetts College of Art with honors I have entered this very formidable world and gone on the make things even harder for myself. I find challenges and new experiences both difficult and necessary for my personal growth was an artist and person. Deciding not to stay in Boston or on the East Coast, I moved 3,000 miles away from friends, family and anything familiar to San Francisco, CA.

After a year in this strange city, I have made new friends, found a studio space, and created a number of paintings which are informed by California. My environment is where I draw the information with which I paint. I began painting self-portraits and cityscapes, which have recently transformed into pieces that are more abstract. Painting more directly the relationship between what I was seeing, and what actually ended up on the canvas was clear. There was some odd beauty to the way three people were sitting on the train, to the train station itself, with its dingy rafters and curving highway overhead. Lately, I have been processing the information I see more. Letting the color of the sky slide through the layers on my brain, and sit in a place i can hold it for awhile. I find these pieces resurfacing while I mix my colors. I use the city's textures and crowds transforming them into transparent layers or opaque shapes.

I hope to continue making things hard for myself and to use these experiences to further my painting. I hope to do this by continuing to search out new environments and situations, which will challenge me and add to my vocabulary of colored and shapes. It is my intention to become a successful, vivid, and exiting painter."

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