According to Webster’s Dictionary, to doodle means to draw aimlessly. This was my contribution to the arts during my tumultuously emotional and physically awkward junior high years in South Florida. My canvases were typically brown paper bag textbook covers or craftily folded notebook paper smuggled to my consorting friends during English class. High school, however, gave me the opportunity for more serious application of my right brained skills as I took an elective art class while serving on our yearbook staff as layout designer, caption writer and an occasional photographer.

Many moons later, I found myself sitting in my first college freshman drawing class terrified, dry mouthed, and wondering what I had been thinking when I changed my major after a year of music classes. As the semester continued, I was soon to find that God knew what He was thinking, and had shown me the path He had chosen for my life. A few weeks before graduation, I chose the continuation of art deadlines, pressure, and all night paintouts as I signed the dotted line guaranteeing myself two more years of art critiques, a teaching position, and an illustration job during my graduate studies.  Now I was the teacher in a room full of dry mouthed terrified freshman drawing students. My, how life gets us ready for the next steps without our knowledge.

Shortly after graduating with a Masters in Commercial Art, I married and moved to southern New Jersey. For a time I was actively photographing the Haddon Heights area and painting the town park in particular during the changing seasons. We have since moved further north as my husband and I now reside in the glorious Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. In my studio, I paint still lifes of food or flowers as of late in oil both in an impasto and oil wash style. Outside my studio during the warm months, I may be found somewhere in New York state tucked away from public view sketching and painting God’s creation. All these years later, I am blessed to still be doing what I love. Only now I doodle with purpose on linen canvases.