Biography

Always have dreamed of being an artist...a painter.

This journey or aspiration began in elementry school when I got a really large box of color crayons for school.

I was born in Denver, Colorado and grew up in the suburbs of The Mile High city near the foothills of the Rocky Mountains near Boulder.

The indigenous history of the Denver region and Colorado more broadly is with the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and Ute Mountain Tribe who are the first people,first nation. I acknowledge that the land that I have occupied is and remains originally native ancestral land.

Both sets of my grandparents homesteaded 160 acre dry-land ranches, one in Wyoming & the other in Oklahoma. Second generation immigrants from eastern & western Europe, they participated in the colonizing of America at the expense of the indigenous cultures. 

My folks were third generation Americans, they were solid, sturdy, hardworking ranch stock, who wanted something more than the rural farm life for themselves.

My suburban landscape included views of the Boulder Flatirons, an incredible postcard landscape. Looking out East...the great plains stretched out to forever. An intoxicating western landscape zipped past the car windows on the consistent road trips north into Wyoming and west into Utah.

Most of my summers were spent on a ranch in Torry Utah and at the lodge in the Capitol Reef National Monument. My dad was an independent prospector, he held and worked gold, silver and uranium claims in both Utah and Colorado. He also was a talented jack of all trades & an accomplished silversmith. My mom left Wyoming and moved to the big city of Denver, worked as a waitress, in retail sales and as administrative assistant. My mother also was an artist. My older sister was an elementary school teacher and my younger sister was a therapist and artist. My entire family was forever engaged in making art and doing crafts of all sorts.

We lived in the shadows of Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant (as downwinders) near Boulder. Witnessed the unfolding horrors of the Vietnam war and with that, the polarization at home. Endured assignations and enormous positive social upheaval. Excess destroyed great creative talents. Buddhism came to the west and flowered in Boulder and in America. Artists became influencers and superstars. Museums and galleries prospered, collectors collected and art became a big business.