My Story

A woman with short gray hair and red glasses painting with watercolors in an art studio with a brick wall background.

I fell in love with the South Carolina Low Country in 1994, and for the better part of the thirty plus years since, I've lived there, owned property there, or found my way back as often as I could.

After years of visiting, I finally made the Hilton Head Island area my home in 2005, moving there from Illinois. My path has taken a few turns since. I moved to Texas in 2016, and then returned to the Low Country in 2022, this time to Latitude Margaritaville Hilton Head. There, I began painting scenes of everyday life in the community, the bandshell, the movie theatre, Bar N Chill, and other spots my neighbors would recognize, and printing them onto mugs, tumblers, coasters, and more. The South Carolina Low Country has always felt like home, but in 2026, my heart called me back to Texas to be closer to my daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren.

Wherever I've lived, the marsh grass, palmetto, and coastal birds of the Low Country have stayed close to the surface of my work. That landscape is what drew me back to watercolors in 2012, after a twenty-year hiatus, and I've since added line and wash, block prints, and colored pencil drawings.

My Work

Every original is painted with permanent, archival watercolor pigments on acid and lignin-free paper. Prints are giclée, produced from the originals using archival paper and ink, each with a certificate of authenticity. The block prints come from my own hand-carved wood, linoleum, and soft-cut blocks.

Training

  • Minor in art, DePauw University

  • Associate programs, Northern Illinois University and the Art Institute of Chicago

  • Botanical Illustration Certificate, Morton Arboretum, Lisle, Illinois

My Art Journey

Watercolors

My history with watercolor goes back to high school when a summer art program at Northern Illinois University taught me the basics. Years later, during my botanical illustration certificate program at the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois, I picked up the pen & ink and the illustrative watercolor style that still shapes how I paint today.

But it was a Christmas gift that actually brought watercolor back into my life in 2012, when I decided to paint my daughter's new home as a gift, the first watercolor I'd painted in twenty years.

It's a fitting place for it to have started, since house portraits are still some of my favorite pieces to paint.

Block Printing

Block printing goes back even further. My first carving was done on wood in a high school art class, and I was lucky to have inspirational teachers in both high school & college who introduced me to a range of printing methods: relief prints, batik, screen printing,
each one a little different from the last.

It sat quiet for years, but then a few years ago, I came back to it,
this time carving and printing from linoleum blocks... and it's been part of my regular practice ever since.