murals

Mural for Eddie's Room 

Mural for Eddie's Room

Mural for Jack's Room

Mural for Jack's Room

THE BACKSTORY...
I will paint anything. About 6 years ago, I began to actually paint as an artist, using a canvas on an easel and painting for the pure pleasure of discovering and rediscovering my creativity. But before that, painting was always a part of what I could do. I would create murals for camp, scenes for school, decorative walls for baby rooms, personalized furniture, birthday posters, signs...anything.

When we moved into our home in New Jersey, the kitchen was covered with shiny white wallpaper that had 1980 style splashes of silver, turquoise and pink all over it. Zach helped me strip off the paper and he eventually became a pro at removing the stuff from every other room as well. I don't think I will ever consider buying wallpaper again. Anyway, we removed the kitchen paper and I painted the walls the color of butter. Nice, calm yellow walls. It was lovely until I got bored with it! To add something to the room, I started to paint bagels along the soffit (the wall above the kitchen cabinets). The bagel store people thought I was crazy. I asked for a sesame bagel, but I had to see the sesame bagel first before they bagged it since it was to be my model. I not only learned at the time what a soffit was, but that salt bagels are not salted on the top but only on the bottom. I was so annoyed with that fact! Then I took my bagels to a paint store and held them up against the paint chips. That made the paint store people laugh. They said that now they have seen everything. (Most people bring in a pillow from their couch. I brought in a bag of bagels!) For years, my bagels were the only thing up in my house that I actually painted, aside from the occasional birthday poster. I loved seeing my work on the walls even though it would be another 5 years before I started painting for real... painting for me.

Backdrop for "Annie"

Set Design was a part of my painting experience for many years. I now teach set design as an after-school club at my school, but before that, I painted the backdrops of 6 shows each summer for Camp Lakota and then backdrops for performances each summer at Camp Kinder Ring. It was at Kinder Ring that I met Sue Smith. She and I would always look forward to meeting with the play director, researching our scenes and painting late into the night (or hope for an all day swim so we could paint all day! Thank you Joel!!) I learned many things from Sue, including how to use an old school projector to project images onto the wall, to appreciating the value of a good song to paint by, to how to organize our space. She is an amazing artist and I consider myself so lucky to have had all of those camp years with Sue.

Backdrop 

Backdrop 

Backdrop

Backdrop of Hopewell Junction
for "Grease"