My introduction to contemporary painting started with teaching Art Courageous, an art club for teens at Tualatin High School, in Oregon. The students had a desire to do fun, funky and colorful projects. I started experimenting with the mixed media of watercolor and opaque tempera and after several months of enjoyment with combining wet mixed media, I began to develop the dry and wet mixed media that I call "Wet, Dry, Warm, Cool, Fusion."

Wet and Dry refers to wet and dry medium. Warm, cool fusion refers to my use of complementary colors laid next to and over each other. I combine watercolor, soft pastel and liquid acrylic lacquer that is applied with a pump spray on rough watercolor paper. I apply a high contrast watercolor under the painting and then multi-layer soft pastel. I fix each pastel layer by saturating it with acrylic lacquer. The lacquer turns the pastel to acrylic paint. Doing pastel washes on the rough surface causes the pastel to catch on raised areas of the paper which causes the highly textured color layers of the painting.

Art Gallery owner Carole Bordack encouraged me to begin doing contemporary work in oils. A friend and artist Millie Van Sickle, who has painted in the technique of impasto using thick painting medium and oil pigments with pallet knife, began instructing me. This birthed a new love and freedom as stiff medium such as painting butter, allows me to build thick layers that give the painting a look of modeled relief. I then use thin glazes of complementary color to add detail.