I was raised in South Eastern Pennsylvania amid the pastoral charm of the Amish countryside. From a young age, I have been inveigled by the magic of illustration and it’s ability to convey emotions—worlds even—through visual imagery. Drawing, painting and sculpting in a representational way was compulsory from the very beginning. However, while all the work I’ve undertaken entailed a level of visual technical ability, I primarily disowned my identity as an artist until I had my daughter in 2016. Hitherto, I was turned off by the vacuity of popular contemporary art which marked me as primarily clever and provocative, yet technically uniformed and devoid of soul. Personally, it was not until I underwent the profoundly vulnerable experience of becoming a mother that I found the ability to dedicate myself to crafting an image that I deeply resonated with. During this period, I discovered the contemporary realist movement which married the technique of the old masters and the expressive emotional quality of modernism. This confluence unveils a realm beyond, embodying the Latin motto Plus Ultra—something more, something further, transcending the limitations perceivable only through the mechanics of vision.

In 2018, I was accepted to the professional artist’s program at Studio Incamminati, a rigorous apprenticeship in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where I studied traditional methods of painting, drawing and sculpting from life under renowned portrait and figure artists such as Nelson Shanks, Stephen Early, Ja FangLu, and Kerry Dunn.

As spiritual and corporeal beings, we humans long for the numinous encounter that Darwin referred to as "a taste of the beautiful." The central theme of my work is to encourage a more intimate and contemplative exploration of the visible world and the subconscious dimensions that underlie it. Inspired profoundly by the Photo-Secessionist Anne Brigman, who skillfully portrayed dynamic figures in their natural, primordial context, my artistic endeavors pay tribute to the gesture and wildnerness inherent in the nude form. The figure serves as an aesthetic counterpart to the enigmatic order and mystical beauty of the natural world.