I was in love with everything in Mexico for the 30+ years I lived there. I painted each thing through my enamored eyes. In Vallarta it was the water, the dense tropical foliage and exotic flowers. Travelling around Mexico, I painted the people, their towns and marketplaces, and their art.

Mexico was my artist’s path. I was able to create myself as artist in her warm all-embracing culture. Though I moved away in 2016, I feel that I bring in my heart the life, love and freedom gifted to me by Mexico and her people.

Watercolor has always been my chosen medium. We are akin to one another in our transparency. I like that my underlying drawing, the bare bones, often shows through.

For years, portraying the detail, harmony and patterns of things “just as they are” was compelling and satisfying. Over time, an evolving of the creative process occurred that I can only see in retrospect. Each series takes “creating” further, technically and personally where I have a growing awareness of my own voice.

I wonder how the land of enchantment in New Mexico, where I now am, will seep into me and express through my watercolor?

What first inspires me to paint and specifically in watercolor is the way the natural light lands on and comes through things in the natural world.

Whether it is light on baskets, light refracted through colored bottles, as sprinkled on gardens or coming through leaves and flowers, revealing their transparency, I want to capture that light happening.

I came to art through drawing. Drawing is completely mesmerizing for me. Because watercolor is transparent, there are places where the drawing shows through. I like that the underlying structure is partially apparent.

Also requisite for me to be happy with my painting is an extreme contrast of light to dark. I maximize the scale from the white of the paper to the saturated dark of layers of paint sitting atop each other and so satisfy my eye.