“I believe all art is a response to the numinous—that “whatever it is” which compels me to be who I am and to do what I do. My aim is to be always true to that inspiration. Work I’ve submitted for Art About Agriculture comes from a recent solo exhibition on the campus of Blue Mountain Community College that I called, Nearsighted: East of the Willamette Meridian. Just plain autobiographical, the exhibit’s title refers both to my habit of—out of necessity—standing up close to the easel when I work and to my particular view of the world…the slant of “light” that for me is—measured as it is from the Willamette Meridian—eastern Oregon.
“While my paintings are always a study in line and color for its own sake, I recognize in all of them the influence of my longtime surroundings (I grew up on my family’s farm in eastern Oregon, where my dad and mom were dedicated stewards of the land; my husband, Dave, and I now live and work on our own farm north of Pendleton): the unfolding landscape—big sky, field and scrub, rocky creek bed—windswept from the crumbling Blues across to the monumental Columbia River basalt.“