Artist, Painter | Medium: Digital Mixed Media | Read Artist Bio

Artist Bio:

My art has spanned my lifetime. At a young age I began drawing and painting, later I moved on to hand-tinting my black and white photography. I worked as a restoration artist, restoring medieval castles in southern France and spent my free time traveling across Europe, photographing slices of country life and encapsulating vignettes of the continent’s astounding natural beauty. I’d return to my stone-floored studio in Saint Victor and make large – sometimes wall-sized – prints of my photos. Then I would spend weeks or months color-tinting each photo by hand.

After my eleventh stint working abroad, I met my husband in Minneapolis, MN, and began creating mixed-media artwork. My pieces were shadow-boxed, dimensional, found-art compositions. I broke into the art fair circuit and did regional shows, then hit Chicago and midwest. I enjoyed a certain level of success but felt that I had plateaued with my medium.

My latest iteration allows me to express myself more than ever before – swashes and patterned backgrounds embedded with provocative and editorial imagery. Women bedecked in tall hats in a roomfuls of curios or a cryptic glance from a mystic jackrabbit in a cloud of multicolored fireflies.

I compose in Photoshop layering photography, and graphic images and patterns and transfer the result onto hand-painted birch panels. I craft the panels into a handmade. shadowbox frame.

My technique found success, not only regionally but around the country. We travel nationwide selling my work at art fairs or placing them in galleries or installations. My pieces have been displayed in numerous restaurants, billboards, businesses and corporations and I have been featured in several city magazines and newspapers and interviewed on television and social media. I’ve accumulated 17 Best In Show/Category, 7 Commemorative Artist, and 10 awards of excellence.

Born, raised and educated in Minneapolis, I now live work and play in the woods of Northern Minnesota with my husband and fellow artist Steve Stratman, and our dog Komet.