For 36 years I lived in Cedar Key, Florida, in an historic home on a remote island, where I studied, painted, traveled, camped by kayak, and led workshops about the personal artistic travel journal, the Journey Daybook. My extensive collection of journey daybook pages are painted and written glimpses into my life that I make regularly, often, but not always, when I travel.

My art life began in New York, near my birthplace, where I worked as a medical illustrator, first for Columbia University and then as a free-lance artist. During this time, I studied and traveled to Italy where I learned the practice of egg tempera painting from a restoration professor who restored the Cimabue Crucifix of 1265, after its damage during the Florence flood of 1966. A move to Florida came in the mid 80’s when my husband and I decided to embark in a new life of retirement, where we restored our beautiful old Florida island home and traveled extensively. I was widowed in 2001.

I embraced my 2021 move to New Mexico as just another challenge in life. For several years I was intrigued by the idea of living in a large Catholic US city with a diverse population. I researched several possibilities. My niece, who lives in nearby Colorado, suggested Albuquerque, one of the researched cities. As a Pisces, I moved from the shores of the Gulf of Mexico to a desert plateau that was once on the shore of an inland sea.

Most of my time in Albuquerque has been spent painting and I have also begun to show my work. I enjoy my pleasant garage studio that is attached to my home. When the pandemic first started, I was invited to join an online Zoom Figure Drawing group, The New Orleans Drawing Group. Our live models, from all over the US and abroad, pose live in their homes on camera. I have made watercolor portraits and figure studies nearly every Thursday since early March 2020. I also paint plein air with two painting groups regularly and I continue to work outside by myself as much as possible, often painting from the comfort of my Prius. I love to camp and paint along with my dog, “Ruthy,” Ruth Bader Ginsberg.