Background

I was raised in a quirky home filled with artwork, books, and piles of salvaged building materials. My father was a professor of fine arts and a self-taught builder. My mother was a lover of books and stories. 

After years of informal painting and drawing instruction from my father, I started in the fine arts program at Miami University, later graduated from a commercial art program in Cincinnati, and, ultimately, changed direction altogether. For 25 years, I ran a documentary production company with my (now late) husband, Pat O’Donnell. Producing documentaries was its own form of art, but my hands always found their way back to painting and sculpting. In some ways, I find that painting is not that different from making documentaries — I still seek out atmospheric light and an interesting story, but it’s captured in one frame instead of many.

Working mostly in oils, my style would probably be considered "expressive realism." My paintings often take on a somewhat monochromatic, tonalist approach, and I am always drawn to scenes with mercurial, interesting light.