My artistic mentors come from many different disciplines: the music, literature and art of Russia and Nineteenth Century Journals about the exploration of the American West. During the 1991-92 Russian Year of the Reform I was an exchange Lecturer from the University of Wyoming to Moscow, Russia. This gave me the opportunity to explore my lifelong love of Russian artists and composers -Pasternack, Tolstoy, Repin, Levitan, Checkov and Mussorgsky. An important influence in my series on Russia can be seen in the vibrancy of the rhythms and brilliant colors of the pavloso posadwoolen shawls found throughout Russia.
The other important subject in my work is the American West. As a Colorado native, I grew up hiking and climbing the Colorado Rockies and the Wind River mountain range of Wyoming. I find inspiration from the journals of the early explorers and artists - The Journals of Yellowstone Kelly, JC Fremont, FV Hayden, A Bierstadt and JW Powell. The North American West continues to provide a deep well for artists to draw from -the early spring clouds piled up at the base of the Snowy Range, the raw power of a bristlecone forest, a buffalo herd running with the wind in South Park a sense of restorative silence and transcendent beauty.
Currently I am Lecturer in Baroque, Renaissance, and Nineteenth Century Art History at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.