Food
Fruits and vegetables, real ones that haven’t been genetically engineered to fit better into a styrofoam and cellophane package or hold up over cross-country truck rides, are marvels to me. They are the voluptuous and life-sustaining product of sun, soil, toil, minerals, and rain. We don’t need an acre of grain to feed a single grapefruit. But it certainly feeds us, and in so doing, delivers most everything we need to keep our hardworking bodies going. This food is our ancestor, our chemical cousin. In his essay, “The Wild Within,” writer John Tallmadge says “[plants’] iron, boron, carbon, and nitrogen all carry stardust memories into the core of each [of our] living cells.” All the while, they quietly, unpretentiously grace our kitchen counters with lush colors and shapes that humans couldn’t invent if we tried. It’s the intersection of sunlight, color and stardust I’m compelled to paint.
Flowers
Asheville is alive with color in the spring and summer. These paintings are my response to the raucous flora-life around me. The paintings stand as vivid memories of long, warm days.

Painted on salvaged cabinet doors, they preserve a bit of architectural history.
Kitchen
See artist statement.
People
To me, painting at its very best is a still and permanent image of spirit. In the instant a painter touches brush to canvas to record a fertile moment with a subject, the color, stroke, weight of the brush on surface all carry with them the life stories of both the painter and the painted. Trapped in the paint is the recognition, the heartache, the delight, the exhaustion, the accomplishment all in translation from crows feet and dimples to shapes and calligraphic lines.
Hundred Faces
This was an exhibition to celebrate the grand reopening of a favorite cafe owned by a dear friend. Every day for a month I went to the cafe to draw a few of the marvelous faces of the cafe's patrons. The drawing process deepened my fond regard for my neighbors and my respect for the cafe that is such an important meeting spot in Asheville.