I have been an artist all my life. I grew up in a family in which both my mother and grandmother were painters, so it was quite natural for me to study painting in college and see myself as a painter. During my thirties, while teaching art and raising two young children, I was asked to teach a high school ceramics class and began a new adventure in clay. This was a tumultuous time for me as well, and I began studying yoga, which changed my life dramatically. Through yoga in quiet moments we occasionally feel that we are part of the whole.

Working in two spontaneous, wet media – watercolor and clay – I like to search for the essence of things, whether it is in a nautilus shell, an orchid, fish or small animal. This forces me to strip away non-essentials, search for truth and express the simple beauty I find in a bold way.

When I work in clay or paint, I try and feel the gesture of the form, drawing or shaping it without excess. When I struggle with it, it loses life. When I allow it, the piece speaks to me, and intuitively I see a fresh design more exciting than one I may have planned in advance. My watercolors combine abstraction with drawing from life. I soak 300-pound Arches paper, allowing the wet paint to create accidents, controlling the paper as it dries.

Bouncing ideas off each other in these two different media in a playful way becomes an interplay that reveals the landscape of my mind. Ultimately, everything we do is really a self-portrait. I have learned through yoga that we project our lives and ourselves from the inside out.