My first introduction to art came as a young girl sketching Eastern Point Lighthouse in Gloucester, Massachusetts, with my Dad.

Although art was my favorite subject in high school, I graduated from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst with a degree in horticulture and worked in that field for 15 years.

But the heart never forgets its first love, so I picked up a brush again and started painting watercolor landscapes of Cape Cod, where I have lived since 1986. I also travel off-Cape to paint, and have tried my hand at colored pencil and acrylics.

Today, I am an oil painter focusing on Cape Cod landscapes.

I am a member of the Eastwind Gallery in Orleans; my work also has been on exhibit in juried shows at the Cape Cod Art Association, where I have been a juried member since 2000.

Other venues include the Cape Cod Cultural Center, Chatham Creative Art Center, the Exit 5 Gallery in West Barnstable, the Guyer Barn in Hyannis, the Old Selectmen’s Building in West Barnstable, and outdoor shows in Brewster, Eastham, Orleans, and Yarmouth.

Two of my paintings were chosen to be reproduced on menus at the Dan’l Webster Inn in Sandwich as part of a project to highlight Cape Cod artists.

I served on the board of directors of the Cape Cod Art Association from 2003-2004, including as vice president in 2004. I was on the board of the Yarmouth Art Guild from 2003 to 2007, and was vice president from 2003 to 2005.

In 2002, an artist friend and I founded the Village Painters of the Cape Cod Art Association, a plein air group of artists who meet once a week to paint on location. I helped organize and run the first Art in the Village festival in Barnstable in 2003. I am currently co-chair of the Art at the Farm outdoor show at Meetinghouse Farm in West Barnstable.

My art has been greatly helped by the wonderful artists I’ve had the pleasure to study with: Rick Fleury, Christie Velesig, Robert Mesrop, Bill Ternes, Karen North Wells, Sandra Bordeaux, Elizabeth Pratt, Richard Kennerson, Mary Moquin, and Peter Spataro.