Born with congenital glaucoma, I endured numerous surgeries as a baby to save the vision. Because I valued the vision I had and knew the fragileness of it, I loved art, practiced it to the expense of school work, and became good at drawing. I worked as an OT for a year after I became legally blind in the good eye. So at the age of thirty-seven, after losing the other eye and the good one losing more vision, I quit my job to work full time in art, which I had wanted to do for a long time.
I worked in acrylics, pastels, and watercolors to document the changes in my vision. Some of these pieces are in a series showing the fading into gray hues and subtle shades of color. I moved from paintings to pastels, which showed the softness & blending of objects as I saw them. Increasingly unable to get caught up in detail, my art became more flowing, more spontaneous, and more expressive of my feelings. I began to see beauty in fog, in softness, and mystery, and wanted to share that beauty.
As the outer world faded, much of my inspiration for subjects came from my nighttime dreams and visions. These art pieces from dreams often expressed my feelings of loss, pain and acceptance.
I received a MFA in creative writing from Hamline University in 2008, and am currently working on a memoir.
