I can still remember being six years old and experiencing finger paint for the first time.

I kept working the paper and the paint creating at least 20 different images before I heard my teacher's voice say, "Claire it is time to quit...NOW!"  I finished up quickly drawing a fish, waves, and bubbles. Little did I know that I would spend a major portion of my adult life pushing paper and paint to its physical limits.

Much of my color and pattern inspiration comes from my personal "color memory." I grew up in Northeastern Pennsylvania at the end of the anthracite coal mining era.  The remaining smoldering culm banks echo the Blue Coal my family bought and burned to heat our small wood framed house. The distant Appalachian Mountains also reflect the coal deep in the earth.  I spent many afternoons watching my father's homing pigeons fly overhead from our hilly property surrounded by a patchwork of field corn, clover, alfalfa and the random stands of deciduous trees.

It was not until my father's passing and I was making numerous trips "home" to ready the property for sale, that I realized how much my daily surroundings had influenced my papers. In the house I walked past the coal heater with its grid of small mica windows. As I roamed the property I especially noticed the torn and tattered tar paper that layered the exteriors of all Dad's pigeon coops. Each layer was a slightly different age. Each paper had weathered to its own particular patina.  They all sparkled.

It has been my great pleasure to be able to enjoy and make art in this lifetime.  Creating art whether painting, drawing, or taking photographs has helped me celebrate as well as heal from life's gifts and challenges.  My "roots" are in the northeast in the hills and farm lands of Pennsylvania and from my rich Polish background. My gift for color and paint have given me the "wings" to travel and experience color and light in the high desert of New Mexico.  My heart's desire is to create visual images for all to enjoy.