I live in the Columbia River Gorge with my honey and our menagerie of animals. I grew up in Portland and on the river, and journeyed east where I got my BFA in painting at the Rhode Island School of Design. I am represented by the PDX Contemporary Art Gallery in Portland and have plans to start an artist residency and art center on our property in the gorge in the near future.

The opportunity to be involved in this project became the catalyst to resolving a myriad of questions and directions I was facing in my work. I have always considered myself to be a two dimensional artist, barring my penchant for collection and decoration as anything more than enjoyment and inspiration. In trying to envision how to expand to the 3 dimensional, many things seemed to click into place at once.

For some time now, fueled by my guilt over excessive material consumption, I began an increasingly progressive pattern of saving and gleaning the extra paint that does not make it onto my paintings. What began as a side-thought and whim evolved into an obsessive process of collection and organization. It became clear to me that this was the next and most logical step to take in the exploration of what motivates me to create. As my paintings are, at their root, about what happens naturally to paint when it is manipulated: printed, dripped, scraped and rolled, so too is the gathering and study of the unintended and inevitable forms that are created and left behind. There is an uncanny and fascinating similarity between the intentional and consequential aesthetic. The Chaboo has become an integral tool, a compound for creating, salvaging and storing the remnants. It is a potentially boundless forum for discovery, recovery and experimentation. I'm keeping my chaboo.