I discovered I loved the art of collage after attending a class in Loomis given by the local artist, Robin King.
As a child I loved to draw, took art classes in high school, and when I got to Kalamazoo college, I did some painting and print making.
During my subsequent marriages, family, work, and moves I didn’t think often about doing artwork.
After retiring from a career at the phone company and moving to Rocklin from Reno in 1999, I joined the Springfield Fine Arts Club in 2014.
I tried various art forms and found that collage and mixed media techniques fit my love of color and is fun.
I also do some straight acrylic work but most of my collages are a combination of applied magazine and paper items and acrylics.
I like to blend the collage pieces together with paint so that it is hard to see where one paper ends and another begins.
In 2015 I joined Rocklin Fine Arts to enter one of my collages in the Rocklin Fine Arts February 2025 Snowflake Show.
I won 1st Place in Mixed Media and have been creating collages ever since. I am still a member of both groups.
I like to explore different techniques with my mixed media collages, but I usually choose nature and garden scenes for my subjects.
I attempt to complete two works of art every 4 to 6 weeks, but sometimes a do more.
Since developing my collage techniques, I have conducted several collage workshops, both at the Springfield Fine Arts Club meetings and with friends and family.
My family has lots of my collages, and I have those that I don’t want to part with.
But I have sold quite a few also, including my collage ‘Farm Lands’ that won 1st in Mixed Media at the 2025 Rocklin Fine Arts Juried Show.
Creating collages is very meditative for me, although I only work for 2-3 hours at a time.
I have a small house without a studio so, when working at home I do my artwork on a permanent folding table in the bay window of my master bedroom.
Any large pieces end up getting laid out on my bed! I have a wall of cabinets in the room that hold hundreds of pages of magazines, as well as colored and patterned papers and many brushes and tubes of acrylics.