When I started painting, I found myself drawn to styles, imagery and colors that surrounded me growing up. My father’s eclectic gallery of contemporary art, Japanese woodblock prints and abstract lithographs. Marimekko fabrics. Works in New York museums. I’ve always been an appreciative aesthete.

I now love the act of expressing my visual inspiration as my own. It’s like I’m speaking a shared language or sitting at the table with artists that came before me – and that now work alongside me.

I identify most with the concept of duality in my work. Constraints and freedom. Depths and surfaces. Structure and looseness. Monoprints, with the master and the imprint. This yin yang dynamic represents the richness and complexity of who I am as an artist and a person. I grow from exercising the duality, extending my own boundaries, leaping forward.

I’ve always been in the business of creating, first as a graphic designer, then as a project and account manager of strategic brand design. Being artistic has been a constant, and being part of the creative process in my professional life has been very satisfying. At a career juncture, I joined the West Seattle Art Walk as a coordinator, to engage more deeply in my community. The experience was transformative: inspired by the participating artists, their stories and their work, I gave myself permission to tap into my own curiosity to paint abstracts.