I was born in Berlin, Germany. My family moved to Toronto in 1976, where I grew up. I completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at York University, primarily studying painting and art history, though I also got a firm grounding in drawing and printmaking.
After graduation, I pursued a career in marketing, eventually falling into design and development roles. For nearly 20 years I didn’t do much painting, printmaking, or drawing. The interesting thing about that absence from art was that my creativity kept finding its way to the surface. I would think about and plan visual arts projects but never really pursue them. I enjoyed visiting galleries and art museums, but never quite converted that interest into action. I still went to art supply stores and bought paper, paint, pencils, but never put them to use. It was like a quiet voice at the back of my mind that needed to be heard, but which I stifled for years.
In 2018 I came to the conclusion that I had to find an outlet, a way for this voice to be heard and so I started painting again. It was a thoroughly disappointing experience. I discovered that I didn’t have the skills to accomplish the images I wanted to make. Not deterred, I just decided to start over – to become a student again. I wasn’t in a position to return to actual school, but I did adopt the mindset of a new learner.
What that meant to me at the time was that I should let go of the outcomes and just pick up the materials I’d been collecting for so many years and approach making art with a spirit of play. This was revolutionary to me. Uncoupled from the need to make a “masterpiece,” or even make real what was in my mind, I learned to enjoy painting again, to have a sense of wonder about how the materials came together in front of me to make something that was as surprising as it was beautiful.
If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint,' then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.
You’ll see several references to play on this website, including that first series of paintings which I called “Just Play”. Not only did that simple shift in thinking launch me on a new path, but it really made possible everything that followed.
Hugh Leroy, one of my drawing professors at York, once told me that “a work of art is never completed until it’s shared with other people.” I took that to heart and set myself a challenge to start showing my work as soon as possible. In 2018 I participated in my first Moss Street Paint-in and shortly thereafter joined the Victoria Arts Council (VAC) and began participating in their group shows and satellite galleries.
I joined the VAC board in 2019 in the midst of perhaps one of the most artistically productive periods of my life. Things were really starting to come together for me.
And then the Covid-19 pandemic happened. In my web design work, the mass shift to online commerce meant all of my focus was channeled back to my “desk job.” Oddly, while so many people were losing jobs, my greatest challenge was that I was overworked and under immense pressure to perform. Art fell by the wayside and I did very little painting in 2020 and 2021.
I began a halting road back to my artistic practice in 2022, and then in 2023 I found Gage Gallery – a collective of 20+ artists located in downtown Victoria, BC, Canada. I’d heard about Gage back in 2019 from a friend, Anita Boyd, who was one of the first people to buy my art, but had set the idea of joining a collective aside as too ambitious at the time.
Joining Gage Gallery was one of the best decisions I ever made. Working along in my home studio had just been, well, what I expected I was supposed to do. I didn’t have a clue how much I craved the fellowship of other artists until I suddenly found it at Gage.
In participating in group shows and carrying out my various duties within the collective, I unexpectedly found myself with a newly adoptive family which has taught me, inspired me, and enlarged my artistic practice in ways I could never have imagined.
In 2024 I had my first solo show at Gage, titled “A Little Light”, which was a body of work chronicling my emergence from a very dark time in my life.
In 2025, Gage Gallery took over the second story of their gallery space in Bastion Square, converting it into studio space for 6 artists as well as a creative/community hub for workshops and “makers’ circles”. It meant I was finally able to open up my first studio outside my home.
Recent work
Recent posts
Past work
Recent work
Recent posts
Past work
Paintings, Prints, and Drawings
I gratefully acknowledge that the place I work is situated on the unceded lands of the lək̓ʷəŋən People, known today as the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations, who have hunted and gathered here for thousands of years, and whose relationship to the land continues to this day.