About Me
I was born in Houston, TX. After losing my father to cancer, my mother remarried, and we all moved to Guam, my mother’s place of birth. At a very young age, I always created art with any material available; I loved experimenting. It took a while for this to be recognized, though. So, while I (painfully at times) took lessons in everything but art (i.e., ballet, tap, gymnastics, singing, piccolo, and piano lessons), I continued to entertain myself with art. When they finally realized this, my mom found a local watercolorist, Ruth Little, to give me private lessons after school two times a week. We would typically work out of her home studio, but sometimes, we would go around the island painting land, seascapes, and tropical flora and fauna.
Guam had a huge impact on my growth as an artist and as a person. I had complete freedom to roam and dream. We lived on a hill close to the beach, with the back of our village protected by a mountain. I could see the whales go by during their migration periods. I also spent a lot of time with my very large family. There was never a shortage of cousins to play with. We would go booniestomping or dirt biking. Guam is a very peaceful place, and I feel it instilled peace, a sense of beauty, and the need for deep reflection and contemplation of nature. I believe my sense of color and need for much of it stems from my time there.
At the age of 13, I moved back to Houston, TX, my father's land. I had a whole other family to get to know. I attended high school, continuing to make art. I attended Glassell School of Art, where I received a scholarship. I continued and graduated from Southwest TX State in 1998 with a BFA in Painting with an informal minor in printmaking. I am now enrolled at Texas State University to study Interior Design.
I love to travel and believe traveling is essential to being a great artist. I think that part of an artist's vision is to have a broad scope or perspective on different cultures, different latitudes, and the interactions that happen to a person taken out of context. I have traveled to Italy and Sardinia for three months and France on two separate occasions, from the Pyrenees to Paris and south to the coast. I’ve been to Bulgaria for one month, from Sofia to Burgas on the Black Sea, and to England, where I discovered Cornwall, one of my top coastlines, from England to France again through Belgium to Amsterdam, Holland. Spain, for a day, to eat Paella and go to the Salvador Dali museum. Puerto Rico, Mexico, Canada, and last but not least, most of the U.S.A. My favorite places are Cornwall, England, the Black Sea, and Sardinia, in the Mediterranean.