I have an intense desire to make art. Through the creative process I reconnect with the exuberance of the child in me who is naturally endowed, as all children are, with an incredible imagination. I have only to remember how my eyes used to see. There is really nothing to learn but technique and organization, everything else comes from that little girl inside me.

My art is bold and unafraid, just as I was as a child. Intense curiosity brings me close to the subject and painting becomes an intimate experience of seeing, feeling and recording. I am drawn to the details of nature, the nuances of a flower, the brilliance of the edges of a petal when light shines through it. I delight in the playful interaction of colors melting together in water or glass. I am fascinated by the juxtaposition of realistic images with their own distorted fluid reflections.

Though my work is about a real subject it is not photo realistic. My wish is that the actual image will carry the pleasure, playfulness and gratefulness I experience during my own visual feast.

I call my style "EXUBERANT REALISM".

When I was a little girl growing up in Italy I remember wanting to put a rainbow in my pocket. It gradually became a reference point around which everything in my life was organized starting with my color pencils. I would spend hours drawing with them, arranging them in the perfect color sequence of the rainbow.

In fifth grade, my drawing on "United Europe" won the school district contest. It was an array of colorful flags stemming from two hands hovering over Europe. In junior high, under the influence of a wonderful art teacher, I became a prolific little artist. Upon graduating from eighth grade I anxiously went to retrieve my artwork from the school only to discover that it had all been destroyed. That was a blow that marked the beginning of my gray years.

I attended a five year high school where my artistic bent was restricted to graphite technical drawings. Maybe I wasn't meant to be an artist after all, I thought. In my late teens on weekends I would take the train by myself and go to Venice. There the rainbow was in the water of the canals where reflected colors melted into each other. I befriended a group of artists and saw rainbows dripping from their brushes.

I came to California in my early twenties and I began taking art classes in earnest, though practical needs steered me toward a career in hotel management. It wasn't until I married that the rainbow reappeared in all its radiance. Rainbows were in my garden where I painted with flowers, in my children's clothes, my file cabinets, and in my piano music. Then I saw a rainbow in a metal box of 120 colored pencils. The beautiful colors spoke to the little girl I had left in Italy and brought her wondrous search for rainbows back into my life.