I became an artist in my mid-forties. Before that, I’d been busy chasing other life goals. I’d thought I was meant to be a doctor, but I didn’t like sick people when Ispent my first weekend in an emergency room as a first-year medical student. I thought I’d find my escape by marrying a sheep farmer, but that didn’t last. I got my MBA, then my Ph.D., fell in love with a wonderful man, and had two beautiful daughters. But he got sick and died.

Years passed. I fell in love again, this time with a woman. But when my new partner moved in with her kids, two careers were too much to manage. I took a leave of absence from my teaching career and never went back.

I needed to do something to keep my mind engaged. I’d always been busy with something — farm life, graduate school, teaching, gardening, and raising a family. Art was never an active part of my life, but somehow the world of art quilts intrigued me. Why quilts? I’m still not entirely sure. I’d taken a basic quilting class when my husband was ill, but I’d never finished the project. But somehow, the creation of art quilts spoke to me, and the joy I felt while making things was confirmation. I rediscovered a sense of purpose.

I’d always collected acorns and rocks and pinecones or any small token that caught my eye, gathering them in my pocket as I walked. Now I looked at them with fresh eyes. I used my camera to get close to my subjects, to understand the repeating shapes in nature, and to absorb the color to reflect it back in my work. My style evolved as I learned.

Then my partner got laid off from her corporate job. I had to leave my beloved home and garden of thirty years, to begin a new life away from friends and family. We moved from Michigan to a remote town on the Oregon coast.

With that move came a change in my creative flow. My quilts became more personal, created for family, and I explored bookmaking, mark-making, and working with paper and paints. But there were things I could only express through words. Poetry became the perfect vehicle for the emotions, thoughts, and ideas---experiences I’d had, lessons I’d learned, and memories that needed to be voiced.

Visual art. Written art. It all comes from the same creative well of inspiration. It continues to be both a journey and an escape.