Sculpting for me is a combination of deep meditation and problem solving. I often look at my watch and find that five or six hours have passed by, in what seems a half hour's time.
I find that the ideas for my works come out of dreams and day dreams. I try to always have a pencil and small sketch book handy. When sculpting an idea from a sketch- faces, expressions, line lyricism, along with the dramatic play of light and shadows, emerge and inspire one another. I find it to be a magical process of "the eyes teaching the hands".
With a Bachelor of Music degree in Vocal Performance, my careers in the opera world and currently, musical theater, greatly influence the dramatic elements of what my eyes want to see in a piece as I'm creating it.
My mother was a singer, dancer and painter. One of my earliest memories, was captured in a photograph taken by my father.I was two years old and my mother was painting at an easel on the back patio of our house. She said that I would try to stand next to her and want to draw or crayon on the canvas but her easel was too high and I was too small.
The photograph was taken from behind, of the two of us on our back patio. She is standing at her easel painting and I am standing beside her, crayon in hand "creating" on my own small easel that my parents had bought for me. My father was a great encourager of us both.
