After years focused on photography and digital illustration, I started working with clay in 2020. Pottery has become a grounding ritual, challenging me in ways I didn’t expect. Painting, my first love from my studio art days, is something I’m eager to return to. These aren’t just hobbies—they’re where I experiment, fail, learn, and remember why I fell in love with making things in the first place.
I started working in clay in 2020, looking for a way to reconnect with my creative background. What I found was a process that feels a lot like painting — observing proportions, chasing detail, working with texture and form.
I handbuild, and most of what I make centers around animals. I love studying the particulars of a subject and figuring out how to translate that into clay — the weight of a body, the texture of fur or feathers, the details that make something recognizable.
Sgraffito and underglaze are a natural part of my process too. It’s where my painting background comes back in — using line and color on the surface the same way I would on canvas.
I studied Studio Art at the University of Tennessee Knoxville before transferring to Austin Peay State University, where I graduated with a degree in Studio Art and a minor in Marketing.
Artists like Toulouse-Lautrec, Wayne Thiebaud, and Edward Hopper shaped how I see. I’m drawn to bold color, confident line work, and honestly — the unfinished piece. There’s something about seeing the thought process behind the brush, the mistakes, the corrections, the way a painting evolves, that I find more interesting than the polished final product.
I don’t paint as often as I used to, but that way of seeing carries into everything else I do.