The purpose of this site is to provide a space to display my work and communicate with the graduate faculty at the University of Idaho.  I have been teaching for over 13 years and I am very excited to have the opportunity to become involved in a graduate program designed specifically for art teachers. 

 My area of emphasis, as an artist, is studio painting.  Working mostly in acrylic, I often paint along with my students.  It seems that if the kids can see me as an artist as well as a teacher, I have more credibility. 

As a student, my goal for this fall is to develop this site and create an interesting and useful place to display my artwork.  Looking ahead, I am anxious to reconnect with myself as an artist. I believe that the best art teachers are artists.  

My husband, daughter and I live in a small Idaho community on a horse farm next to my mom and my step dad. The perfect place to raise a little girl!  My father was a dairy farmer and my mother was an Art and English teacher.  Although they divorced when I was a teenager, I had a healthy and happy childhood and I learned how to work, use correct grammar and appreciate the beauty around me!  I knew from a very early age that I wanted to be an artist.  I graduated from Boise State University with a Bachelors in Fine Art and K-12 Education.  My first job was as an Art Specialist at two grade schools, part-time in Boardman and part-time in Irrigon, Oregon.  Two years later I found a job close to home, working at the high school level, part-time again, in Wilder, Idaho and three miles down the road, in Homedale, Idaho.  Two years after that, I was hired full time for the Homedale School district and this is where I have been ever since!

At this point in my life, my family and surroundings are the foundation for my paintings.  I strive to capture the beauty and emotion in my world.  As a teacher, I love art that educates and communicates a message or idea.  As an artist, I have a responsibility to my students, and society in general, to communicate a positive message through my work.  My primary goal is to inspire and motivate my students to appreciate the history of art and the liberation of creating. There is an old Indian saying, "All artists are not great men, but all men are great artists."    Art is a vocabulary and a language of it's own.  It can put all of us on a level playing field, and give us the opportunity to excel and to motivate, to express and communicate.