Artist Statement

I prefer to travel on foot.

For five years I have been documenting my hikes in the LBJ National Grasslands near my home. This sweeping prairie landscape hides aspects of the unexpected – tiny ponds, stands of pine, deep ravines, and hints of past lives lived by settlers and indigenous peoples alike. In 2024 I was lucky to be chosen as Valles Caldera National Preserve’s inaugural Artist-in-Residence, where my daily hikes informed a collection of artworks which are now on display at the Volcano Discovery Center. In January 2026 I returned from a life-changing trip to Chile where I was a guest faculty in Art for the UNT Tracing Darwin’s Path study abroad course. We gathered at the Cape Horn International Center in Puerto Williams to create a conceptual intersection between environmental philosophy, biology, and creativity.

Convivencia pursued across cultural identity/resources, human needs, and ecosystem health is a subject of my research as a current post-baccalaureate student in the Geography and the Environment department at UNT. As an artist I seek creative solutions to the challenges we are facing as a species in the face of climate change.

In my oil paintings, I attempt to relate a specificity of place with an appreciation of the landscape which is experiential and immediate. I seek out the moments which are singularly evocative to me as I traverse that space. I avoid the picture postcard method of representation (although I love postcards and collect them wherever my travels take me). I embrace the perspective of a human-scaled inhabitant who is trying to make sense of the space she finds herself in.