2024-2025 Main Street Gallery Season

Artist Statement

My journey as an artist began in East Berlin, where I grew up in a world that felt closed and controlled. Even as a child, I longed for a life shaped by creativity, freedom, and self-expression—things that felt out of reach under the weight of an authoritarian system. That longing stayed with me until I escaped to the West, determined to build a life where I could make my own choices and follow my own path.

Art has always been a part of who I am, but it took many turns and life experiences to return to it fully. My second husband—an artist whose creativity inspired and supported my own—was my partner in a business creating one-of-a-kind wearable art: neckties, bowties, and scarves, sold at high-end craft shows, galleries, and museum stores. After caring for him during nearly two years of illness, I lost him to cancer. I continued our business, but grief and depression set in. In the solitude of a remote cabin surrounded by nature, I began painting on canvas—using color and form to process sorrow and rediscover joy. It was there that my identity as an artist truly began to reemerge: more grounded, more expansive, and more essential than ever.

In 2013, a chance voyage through the Inside Passage brought me to Ketchikan. What was meant to be a brief stop turned into something much more. From my first hike up Dude Mountain, I was captivated by the intensity of the landscape—rising from sea level to alpine heights in a matter of hours. That moment marked the beginning of a deep, ongoing relationship with the wild beauty of Southeast Alaska.

My exhibit, Hikes of Ketchikan Through the Eye of an Artist, is both a celebration of nature and a call to community. These paintings capture not only the grandeur of alpine views, but also the intimate encounters—the fawns on a rainy trail, the raven watching a trail-side poetry reading, the ancient cedars that feel like old friends. I hope visitors will be inspired to seek these places themselves, to walk with new eyes and a deeper sense of appreciation.

Art has the power to connect people. Many of my closest friendships in Ketchikan began at gallery openings. I imagine this exhibit’s opening as a gathering of hikers, a celebration of shared experience—like mending nets or dancing together. In a time when so much isolates us, I want my art to bring people together.

We are stewards of this land and its beauty. My paintings aim to highlight the preciousness of the wild—the trees, the creatures, the fleeting light—and to encourage a sense of care and responsibility. Beauty heals. If my work can offer someone a moment of joy or shift how they see the world, even slightly, then I feel I’ve made a meaningful contribution to both art and community.