I started the corporate crawl as a designer/art director at Bass Pro Shops Headquarters. Then I moved to St. Louis where I worked as an art director creating sales promotion materials for such clients as Anheuser Busch, Reebok and Mattel. Burnt out from long hours, and the quest for something different sent me to Japan to teach ESL and work as a freelance designer.

There I met Barry, my husband. Three years and twenty countries later we married and settled in Knoxville. In the process we were able to travel throughout Asia, Europe and India, and Barry attended photography school in England. In Knoxville, I began again as a freelance designer while Barry started photographing weddings.

After our second daughter was born I decided to concentrate on photography myself (as well as the mother part!). With close to 20 years experience of working with photographers and with the encouragement and tutelage of Barry, I decided that photography was my natural career path.

In 2001 I began taking photography courses locally and soaked up as much as I could, but felt a bit frustrated. Gradually I learned through PPA and WPPI (national photography organizations) that there is a whole world out there of professionals teaching and sharing exactly what I need to learn. Not the stuff of corporate big business or fancy ad agencies, but what fulfills a mother wishes of capturing the artistic likeness of her child and what works in real life. I am still on my learning journey that hopefully will never cease. But in the mean time I am creating fine art portraits that are more than just a record of a face on paper. My hope is that my photographs are works of art that capture relationships at a moment in time.