love painting in oils. I remember when I was five, it was summer. I was on our screened-in porch bending over a sheet of white paper laid out on the table where we ate supper. I could hear the waves lapping on the shore, smell the salt air on the breeze, and listen to the birds sing in my favorite tree as I smeared my finger paints across the page. Sometimes I would climb that tree to watch the sticky cocoons turn into butterflies. Sometimes I would charge across the sun-baked beach to the waters edge and grab a wet handful of sand to bring back to scrub into my finger paintings: bright colors and gritty, muddy mixtures.

I love painting in oils with the lush bright colors and somber combinations that I can push around the canvas with my brushes or palette knife. The textures, layers and colors mesmerize me. The movement of my hands applying paint grounds me, and the smell of the oil paint drying calms me. Painting is my sanctuary where I play with the warm and cool colors, the range of hues and variations of texture- making sense of the world around me. Years later and now my studio is the cocoon nurturing my paintings before they take flight.

I see the essence of pure energy behind my reality. The colors, mood, and mystery of the moment intrigue and inspire me. I sense the magic and fleeting change of the fog before it lifts and the frost before it melts and squeeze it onto a flat canvas. I feel the texture of life and allow the paint to create its voice like the sunlight warming the soft fur of a cat. The more spontaneously I can allow myself to translate the energy in the language of painting the more unique my interpretation of reality. So I am a chaser of magic that glimmers and twinkles just beyond the surface of what I see, following fireflies shimmering on a warm summer's night. I love painting in oils.