As a child, I was always drawn to colour, drawing, and painting. My mother always said I had superb macaroni art - “It was very well put together for a preschooler.” I grew up in the Comox Valley with a second home on Hornby Island, where my family would escape for long weekends and holidays. It’s an inspiring community, brimming with unique landscapes, wildlife, farmers markets, potters, textiles, musicians, and many talented painters. As kids, we were entertained with various creative projects: sandcastle building, tie-dying, rock painting, and scavenger hunts (glorified garbage clean-ups, in hindsight). Combining nature with art is what shaped me as a person.

I favoured art classes during my school-age years but never pursued any formal art training. After high school, I travelled abroad to Australia and Southeast Asia, then later to India and the UK. Travelling provided me with a new perspective and intense appreciation for what I missed about “home” and what defines Vancouver Island: coastal landscapes, sandy beaches, characterful arbutus trees, rocky bluffs, underwater kelp gardens, fields of dry summer grass, and the rugged shorelines of the wild west coast. This is where my heart is and what I aim to capture and translate into my paintings.