One of my most vivid childhood memories is of my grandmother’s kitchen, filled with strong, Colorado sunshine. There my grandmother would ‘hold court’ at her kitchen table, two of her three grown sons stopping in each weekday morning for a breakfast that included toast made from homemade bread and the freshest eggs I had ever tasted. At that table my Nonnie would tell stories; Stories about all of us, stories about days past, some sad or embarrassing, but mostly funny ones. Her upper arms would jiggle as she gestured, smoke would curl from a cigarette, forgotten in the ashtray, as the story grew and filled the kitchen. Out back the horses would hang their heads over the wire fence as though they too, wanted to hear. It was mesmerizing……magical, for a young girl to sit at that Formica table and just let the stories and the laughter of the grown ups wash over her.

And that is precisely what I want to do as an artist. I want to tell such magical, funny stories that the viewer feels like a youngster, at the family table, listening closely to stories about what makes us all so similar, so funny, and so very, very dear.