Like most artists, I grew up with my hands always covered in chalk, paint or pencil dust. Unlike most artists, I stopped drawing when I was 18 and didn't pick up a pencil for ten years.

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At 28, I was diagnosed with metastatic cancer. Artwork then became the mechanism by which I coped with feelings about my own mortality and it helped me pass time during chemotherapy. Cancer transformed my art. I abandoned the graphite and ink drawings of my youth in favor of elaborate and exotic colored pencil works. 

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Surviving cancer felt like emerging from a cave- like I was experiencing sunshine and color for the first time. When I draw, I am not just putting a shape on paper. I am trying to capture the life and eccentricity that I see in each of my subjects.