The first day of Drawing One at Denver Community College, my teacher looked at my sketchbook and said I “had background.” He was right. I had been obsessed with drawing since I could hold a pencil. It wasn’t just the motion of making a mark. It was that satisfaction of capturing the essence of a face or an object the way a song finally sounds right on guitar. That feeling of translating the world into something true and mine healed something that had been bruised for a long time, the part of me that felt misunderstood, wrong, or simply bad.
Art became my self-soothing practice. It was a place to make a world where I could be understood. But like so many artists, I lived inside a catch-22. I wanted to protect those works because sharing them felt like exposing myself to rejection. Then that photorealist teacher-whose work was precise, almost robotic in its perfection , told me he envied my line work. He envied my courage to be free and still capture something real. He told me I needed to start showing my work.
That nudge changed everything. Momentum rolled in. My first gigs were humble and messy and glorious all at once. I remember making eighty dollars for a logo that took me a hundred and forty hours to perfect. Imposter syndrome was a constant companion. I did album covers, T-shirts, book covers, and dog commissions on the side. Every little job was a lesson and a stubborn vote for myself.
One of my first paintings
I went to the art store and got paint the day my art professor told me I should be a painter.
Then life got complicated. I fell into a relationship that turned violent and controlling. Painting became the way I held my rage and my longing. Making a painting felt like writing a Taylor Swift song- a purge, a confession, a triumph. That era is when many of my raw, uninhibited nudes came to life. They were rebellion and yearning all at once. I was starving emotionally and tried to survive on scraps of validation from someone who kept turning away. When things escalated to the point of physical danger, when the fight nearly killed me, everything pivoted. I ran. I got a call with a warrant for my arrest while running a half marathon in Cleveland. I took the charges, went through probation, court mandated therapy, cognitive behavioral work, anger management, and stayed sober. Covid hit and most of that healing happened over Zoom.
The first drawing I ever sold
I think I sold this Paul Jason Klein portrait for 30 dollars. It is still one of my very favorite works. I think a guy bought it.
Oceans Away
One of many 2020 attic nude self portraits.
A month before I turned thirty, he left me for the last time. I had lost things in the process — an apartment I loved, a car I had to sell — and I moved into an attic where at night I could hear lions roaring at the zoo. I had a twenty dollar an hour job as a marketing manager and nothing else to lean on but my painting practice. I painted sad nude portraits until the paintings turned black and then I painted some more. I posted the work on social media and slowly people began to notice.
This is me in my musty crusty attic apartment! My apartment was so small and my paintings were so giant you could not move around at all.
During the lockdowns I found an app called Clubhouse and it changed the game. I joined rooms of artists painting into the late hours. Some of them were really famous. We talked, critiqued, encouraged, and kept each other awake with creativity. I would be in my car on the app with three hundred artists while filling up gas. Being in that energy pushed me to step up my game. Compliments and connection from fellow artists made me believe that maybe there was a path forward.
Five years later here I am. It is still a grind but I am still here. After Covid I dove into the mural scene and traveled for big jobs in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. I painted ice cream shops and living rooms and corporate walls. Today I am in Gates Mills painting in the barn. I teach other women how to paint. They show up eager and honest and messy. They inspire me. The barn has given me a place to ground, to reset, and to remember why I started: to heal and to help others heal.
Making money doing what I love is a blessing. But the true measure of wealth for me is when a student or a collector tells me the work made them feel seen or connected to something bigger than themselves. If I can make someone feel like a part of humanity or closer to God with a painting, then I am the wealthiest woman on earth.
If you want to see where that journey has led, explore my latest collections of prints, canvases, and originals in my shop.