For over twenty years I made beautiful gardens in Westchester, NY. My landscapes were often unruly, romantic visions inspired by my travels. They were published in several books and magazines and are included in the Smithsonian Archives of American Gardens. In 1987, I began to study Katazome (Japanese stencil-dyeing) with Eisha Nakano. I performed all aspects of the process, eventually adapting this method to dye suede and shearling. For many years I designed luxurious wearable art, upholstery leathers and home furnishing accessories.
In 2003 my son died and my life was forever changed. Beauty was no longer the inspiration for my artwork. I began to study the human condition. I started painting figurative oil paintings in 2004, focusing on people who had survived hardship or who used ritual to connect with the rhythms of the earth. My life and art became an exploration of our transformative cycles through time. The rituals primitive people had used to connect with the teachings of the earth became even more meaningful to me. Earlier in my life I had studied this, focusing on the Crow Tobacco Society. With the loss of Andrew this ritual, signifying the cycles of life, death and rebirth, took on greater significance for me. I needed to capture a glimpse of our soul's evolution in the exchange of energy between the cosmos and life on earth. My life had changed and my art, as an expression of my inner being, had to change with it.