I was raised on the western shore of Southern Maryland, and encouraged by my parents to draw and write. Drawing was always something I enjoyed and I was fortunate to have teachers and educators to encouraged me as well. In my teens I was doing a lot of watercolor and ink drawings. Around that time my father, who was a college professor, had an art professor come into his office where some of my art was hanging. He encouraged me to enroll in some college classes, which I did for a few years, learning from Jeff Carr, Sue Johnson and Tom Rowe.
I later graduated from high school through a home schooling program. I struggled in school but enjoyed working outside, particularly with animals. At that time my main source of income was doing farm work and working with horses, while continuing my art. ln the late 1990s I was involved with a project to illustrate a tarot deck with images from the Chesapeake Bay tidewater region, with Tom Wisner, a local musician, artist and educator, and his friend Roberta Roberts. Around that time I also entered an international illustration competition that was put on by The Folio Society in England. I chose to illustrate some of Edgar Allen Poe’s stories, and although I failed to place in the competition, it compelled me to produce a cohesive group of drawings. Shortly after that I received a scholarship from the Rhode Island School of Design, but decided to stay on the farm in Maryland to work with animals. For the next few years I primarily worked on pen and ink drawings from my imagination. During this time, Charles Fick, art curator and photographer, organized a show of my art at his house, where I sold some work, and encouraged me enter one of the first Artomatic exhibitions in Washington, D.C.
In 2005 my animal work took me to Flagstaff, Arizona, where I began creating larger drawings as well as incorporating color and mixed media, oil painting, sculpture, and digital work. Currently I find inspiration in the wildlife, landscape, ancient people, and cultures of the Southwest.