Growing up in Detroit Michigan, I was always focused on my love of art from classes at the Detroit Art Institute, the Arts and Science Program at Cass Technical High School and continuing at Wayne State University where I earned a BFA in Art and MA in Printmaking. I was also certified as a K-12 Art Teacher. Then I fused my art training with Landscape Design and Planning. I attended the University of Michigan where I earned a Master of Landscape Architecture degree. Since 1976, I have worked as a professional planner and landscape architect. This work has incorporated my art training through the design of streetscapes, residential and commercial developments, design guidelines, and related tasks.
In 2012, I returned to my original passion – printmaking, focused on etchings, lithographs, silkscreen, and relief prints. Beginning in 2020 with the Covid lockdown, I began to work on digital images. My digital printmaking practice typically works with multiple layers of color, texture, pattern, transparencies to create a depth and variation in the color fields. I examine the images and modify them with multiple changes in patterns and color transparencies to achieve the final results of the artwork. I work with the Corel Paint application and print my final art works on an Epson SureColor Pro700 printer using archival pigment inks on various archival papers.
For the Hamilton Street Gallery “Reflections Exhibit”, I have included five self-portrait image prints.
Three of these images focus on pomegranates. Pomegranates have been a constant image in my art practice since 2013. The pomegranate has a personal significance for me. It is also a fruit that has historic and biblical references to health, productivity, longevity, and purity.
The other self portrait is a digital archival pigment prints. I had created a series of prints based upon the See Hear and Speak No Evil theme. This is reflected in the monochromatic self-portrait. The other self-portrait image is a color digital print made during the Covid lockdown.