My Relationship with Art

I have always loved art. Long before I understood what it meant to be an artist, art was where I felt most at home. As a quiet, shy girl growing up in Chicago, I found in art a place to escape, to dream, and to make sense of the feelings I could not yet express. When words failed me, color spoke. When I felt unseen, creating gave me a voice. Art became both my refuge and my language—and it was there, in those quiet moments of creating, that my lifelong relationship with art first began to take shape.

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That relationship has continued to evolve throughout my life. In 2016, I graduated from Bradley University with a degree in Studio Art – Painting, and in 2019, I earned my Master’s in Counseling: Art Therapy from Adler University in Chicago. I entered the world of Art Therapy because I came to understand what art had already taught me: that creating can reach places within us that words sometimes cannot.

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Becoming an Art Therapist did not pull me away from painting. It brought me closer to it.

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Through my work with children with a wide range of disabilities and disorders, I have witnessed the extraordinary courage that can emerge through creativity. I have watched children transform emotions, memories, dreams, and even experiences of trauma into something they can see, touch, and call their own. In those moments, art becomes more than an image. It becomes a voice. A release. A connection. Sometimes, it becomes a beginning.

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Their stories continue to influence my own.

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I believe art has the power to meet us exactly where we are—to hold what we cannot say, reveal what we may have hidden, and remind us of what is still possible. My hope is to share that sense of comfort, discovery, and healing with others through my work, just as art has given it to me.

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My Art

For me, painting begins before the brush ever touches the canvas. It begins somewhere within—a feeling, an impression, a memory, a thought, or simply the desire to create. I am fascinated by the moment when something that exists only within the mind begins to take physical form.

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I rarely approach a painting knowing exactly what it will become. Instead, I allow the process to lead me. Color, texture, movement, and emotion become part of an unfolding conversation between myself, the canvas, and the medium. I listen, respond, layer, uncover, and sometimes let go. The painting reveals itself along the way.

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I call my style “Atmospheric Impressions.” Rooted in the expressive spirit of Abstract Expressionism, my work explores the emotional possibilities of color, texture, depth, and atmosphere. I want color to do more than decorate a surface—I want it to evoke something. Warmth. Happiness. Energy. Mystery. Longing. Wonder.

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The recent and continuous use of gold and silver leaf in my paintings have become an important part of my visual language. I am drawn to their ability to catch and reflect light, creating moments that seem to emerge from within the painting itself. Their luminosity brings an ethereal quality to my work while accentuating color, form, movement, and depth.

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But the metal leaf carries meaning beyond its physical beauty. Its presence can symbolize the qualities within us that may remain hidden until the right moment allows them to shine. Like a glimmer of inner beauty, resilience, or possibility, the gold and silver become moments of revelation—small reminders that even within darkness, something luminous can exist.

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My paintings exist somewhere between reality and imagination, particularly within my abstract landscapes and atmospheric spaces. I am drawn to the unknown—to the beauty of a painting that does not explain itself completely. I want my work to invite the viewer to slow down, look deeper, and become part of the discovery.

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Perhaps that is what I have always loved most about art: it does not require us to have all the answers.

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Sometimes, we simply need a place to feel.

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And for me, that place has always been the canvas.

 

Hope you enjoy.

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