For the past 25 years, I have worked as a full-time traditionally published children’s book author & illustrator. Realistic portrait work in watercolor and pencil has always been my passion, however. My current focus is split between creating highly realistic portrait art and working with stone, metal, and wood to create organic sculptures that surprise and delight viewers with materials being used in unexpected ways. Working in two entirely separate ways–tightly rendered realism in my portraiture and much rougher abstract work in stone–has afforded me time to explore ways the two disciplines can inform each other. Each way of creating makes me think in different ways and brings me joy when I’m making art.