I enjoy beauty all around me. I choose to LOOK for beauty everywhere: it could be flowers, or the play of light in a cityscape, or the myriad of colors of a crashing ocean wave. When I create art, I am trying to express how and why something is beautiful to me. Most of my work has been representational rather than abstract. However recently I started exploring how I can weave my visual art with my other artistic pursuit: music. I've been performing as a mezzo soprano singer for 25 years. I feel deeply when I listen to music, and my paintings are an expression of those feelings. I have as inspiration, composer Modest Mussorgsky's orchestral work "Pictures at an Exhibition" depicting his experience of walking through a gallery. I'm working in the other direction. Thoughts, planning, and practice are the tools I’m using to realize my vision. I believe that my music-paintings are my unique contribution to art. My hope is to create an emotional experience for the viewer: I hope they like my paintings on their own; but I also hope they listen to the music that inspired the paintings. I think all of us would benefit from more art and music.