I attended Hope College as a Distinguished Artist Scholarship & Margaret Feldmann Kruizenga Scholarship recipient, where I received a degree in Art History.  As a student I acquired a distinct affinity for the early 20th-century fauvist movement as well as the primitively playful nature of American folk art.  I began applying those aesthetic influences to my favorite subject: flowers.  My housemates remember me constantly at work in our dining room with materials sprawled out over our table and painting on anything I could find, from windows or cabinet doors from Habitat for Humanity to salvaged canvas from the Art Department.  If I wasn’t working or in class, I was painting.  To this day that’s pretty much still the same.

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All of my experiences- creatively, academically, professionally, spiritually- inform my work.  Creativity is this force that is constantly with me, and I’ve tried my best to place language around why I love it so much.  As a follower of Jesus, I’m intrigued by a passage in Genesis when God is creating the earth:

“And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food.”

It strikes me that I serve a God who is concerned with beauty as much as utility.  I suppose that even before I had the words for it, that same God was continually forming me to chase beauty.  To this day it’s the best invitation I’ve ever received, and my primary hope through the creative act is to extend that invitation.

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Welcome.

Take a look around. 

Thanks for being here.