About Andrea

When I was about 4 years old, my preschool teacher was somewhat alarmed when I insisted on coloring a woman's hair green. It wasn't random, I wasn't color blind. Maybe I was predicting the punk fashions a few decades later, but more likely it was just early signs of my later affinity for abstract art. I further absorbed the notion of transforming reality—or creating a new reality—during Saturday mornings wandering with my father through the contemporary art galleries at the Baltimore Museum of Art, particularly enchanted by the works of Matisse and Picasso. (Either would have also given that woman green hair.)

As a child, I mostly found my artistic motivation in photography, picking up my first camera at age 8, documenting family activities and later travels and the natural world. More seriously in the past decade, my photography refocused on my early interest in reinterpreting what I see, be it the unintended patterns of rust and paint that become landscapes or city skylines, or the intended, digital juxtaposition of multiple images, including landscape and city views. The magic of digital photography and digital editing has opened more opportunities to "reinvent", as has my growing fondness for the street art (purposeful or incidental) of city alleys and old storefronts. 

My recent foray into acrylics and mixed media work is a logical extension of my photography. While I continue to seek out (or create) abstract images with my camera and digital software, most of my studio time concerns the seemingly unlimited universe of color, composition and texture found in acrylic mediums, collage, monoprinting, and varying combinations of all of the above. 

And as a practicing psychologist for 30 years (retired now for 18), no doubt my art (photography and mixed media) has been influenced by the notion that the human eye interacts with the human brain in idiosyncratic ways that redefine reality. We each see our own version of what's there. And what's not. Perhaps that defines art generally, and it certainly defines abstract and nonrepresentational art.