(gentle music) - I am a wife and a mother of two children.

We also live on a little hobby farm, so I take care of the farm and just working.

(gentle music) Painting gives me a way to play and a way to be someone that I know I am, and I have a lot of fun painting.

It's not work.

(gentle music) The colors and the smell of the oil paint and the feel of the oil paint when it goes on the canvas even is so beautiful.

It's a spiritual thing for me.

(gentle music) I love to paint, and I love to draw, and I've been drawing since I was really young, was growing up in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota.

Everybody wanted me to draw, so that has continued all throughout my life.

I had dabbled in painting a little bit through high school, but I never knew that I would fall in love with painting until my very first painting class at college.

(gentle music) I was able to let go and do something that I had never known before and didn't know existed.

When I first began painting in college, I was opened up to the possibility of finding something that sparked something inside of me that I never have been able to get rid of.

I worked at the Walker Art Center when I was in college, and Joan Mitchell was having a huge show, retrospective of her work, and I'd never seen a Joan Mitchell painting.

I was a young student at the time, and the moment that I got to work that day, and I was all alone with her paintings, it's like you're standing outside, and the colors of her paint and the thickness of the paint, I was nose to nose with that painting, and I knew that's what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

(gentle music) Since I was really little, I wanted to be an artist.

My dream was always to have a farm and to live in the country and to have a family.

I didn't know that was possible until years after college.

(gentle music) I find inspiration from my animals currently, the colors, the shapes, and the lines of things.

I'm constantly looking and seeing things that really intrigue me and draw my attention, and then when I'm down in the studio, painting is a whole different situation.

(gentle music) So the process of making a painting begins with building the stretchers and the canvases down in the studio, and then after they're gessoed and they're up, we just go from there and start putting paint on.

(gentle music) I don't have a picture in my head.

It sort of develops as I'm working.

I found my style through years of working, through years of painting and just continuing to do what I love.

My style, I would define as very abstract expressionistic style.

It's a lot about looking at the paint as I'm working and responding to what I am seeing, and it's very physical for me.

I'm working a lot where I'll go from my palette to the wall in the process of like moving back and forth.

It's like a dance.

(gentle music) There's no screwing up.

There are no rules down in the studio.

There's no rules when I have a piece of charcoal in my hand or when I'm mixing paint.

(gentle music) I think every time I finish a painting, I stand back and go, "Wow, I didn't know that was in me."

Finishing a painting and letting it go, it's a vulnerable thing to let a piece of yourself out there.

(gentle music) One of the first shows I had was in Fargo, North Dakota at Ecce Gallery.

That kind of opened a door for me to just explore, "Hey, I can paint while I'm a mother and a wife."

It was a challenge, but that was an opportunity for me to just learn that I could do a little more than I thought I could.

(gentle music) The tradition of so many wonderful painters painting with oil, it's natural, and I love the smell, I love the texture and just being a part of something that's so much bigger than me and adding to that story.

(gentle music) I think painting and drawing has always just been a part of what I do and how I see the world and how I respond to the world, how I process my feelings.

Living in Minnesota, I'm really drawn to the land, especially the farming landscape and the wide open fields as opposed to the cityscapes of buildings.

There's something about the land here that is special, and you can feel God in the sky and in the fields.

(gentle music) - [Presenter] Funded by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4th, 2008, and by the members of Prairie Public.