About
I enjoy drawing, painting, and photographing subjects with a personal meaning for me. Images that capture me prompt me to capture them, to stop time and decay.
I hope that others will experience something the way I did. Travel has enabled me to witness the unfamiliar, which I like to share. I want to help others to notice nature’s beauty and to marvel at it. I celebrate surprise encounters I’ve had with nature: spotting new-to-me wildflowers or coming upon a deer, or a blue heron.
Although I love art history, have visited many of the world’s major art museums, and am a frequenter of galleries and shows, I try to base my art primarily on my own direct experience and feelings. I want to avoid borrowing from, extending, or reacting to other artists’ work, at least consciously.
While I make it a point to know what is currently fashionable in the art world, if my work does not fit into that frame, so be it. My satisfaction comes from the art-making process and from connecting with others who, like me, also find meaning in what I create.
This is what I have to say about my art after ten years of aspiring to become a full-time artist. My art and I are still evolving as my curiosity, and desire to improve as well as to challenge myself continue. In decade, who knows what my statement will be?
Art Education
Although I do not have formal fine arts credential, I have been taking art classes intermittently since my first at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston when I was twelve. In addition to Emmanuel College courses in art history, aesthetics, and painting (I was an English Literature major), Cambridge Adult Education drawing classes comprised my art education. Then I put aside art to earn a doctorate at Harvard Business School, start a career as a management professor at Bentley University, and raise a family. After a 25-year hiatus, I resumed taking at least one art class a year at the MFA’s Museum School, the DeCordova Museum, or Watertown’s Arsenal Center for the Arts. Among my instructors were Hannah Barrett, Jaque Baldini, Marjorie Glick, Mary O’Malley, and Cat Bennett.
In 2011 I retired a bit early from my professional career in order to make art my primary occupation. Accompanying my husband in Singapore for six months, I was able to take courses in Chinese brush painting at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts and Japanese botanical watercolor painting at Studio Miu. Since returning to the U.S., I have studied perspective drawing with Steve Rich at Boston Architectural College, and taken a Nikon School Weekend Photography Workshop. In the Berkshire Hills, where we have a second home (and my improvised oil-painting studio), I have participated in three workshops at the IS183 School in Stockbridge, MA with Jura Adams. And, I have taken classes at the Becket Arts Center with Steve Hamlin, Wednesday Nelena Sorokin, and Michele Klemaszewski. Most recently I benefited from Craig Pursely's "Painting Landscapes from Photographs" at the Landgrove Inn in Vermont and Jeremy Durling's "Painting From Life: The Figure and the Portrait" at Cambridge Center for Adult Education.
Exhibitions
Juried Art Exhibits
Cambridge Art Association, Cambridge, MA:
New Members Show 2014;
“Lost and Found” 2018
"Red" 2018
"Viewpoints" 2018
Mosesian Center for the Arts Members Show 2018
Grace Chapel Art Gallery, Lexington, MA:
"Shadow Play" 2018
"In Focus" 2020
Belmont Gallery of Art, Belmont, MA:
"Spring Awakening: Birds, Blossoms, and Botanicals" 2019
Mass. Audubon’s Moose Hill Gallery, Canton, MA: “Untamed” 2013
Unjuried Shows
Cambridge Art Association, Cambridge, MA: annual members’ shows 2015-2019 ; 2019 Mary Shein Fall Salon
Habitat Audubon Sanctuary, Belmont, MA: annual members’ shows, 2012-14
Mosesian Center for the Arts (formerly Arsenal Center for the Arts), Watertown, MA: Unjuried Members Shows: 2015, 2016
“You Are Here: Landscapes” 2018
Becket Arts Center, Becket, MA: annually, 2012-19
Other: Community Show at Emerson Umbrella, Concord, MA, 2013; First Parish of Watertown Art Show: 2015, 2016, 2018; Bidwell House & Museum, Monterey, MA, 2018
Arts Organizations Service
Cambridge Art Association Board Member, 9/18-6/21
Becket Arts Center Exhibitions Committee, 2018-