I’ve never been able to separate art from the act of becoming. I grew up in Sweden and came to the U.S. at age 11, with a Brownie Hawkeye camera in my hands and a head full of curiosity. That camera gave me something language couldn’t yet—perspective, reflection, a way to frame the unfamiliar.
Over the years, the tools have changed—light and shadow through a lens gave way to the pressure of ink on paper, and eventually to the physical immediacy of paint—but the impulse has always been the same: to explore, to translate, to connect.
Photography taught me how to see, but I longed for a more tactile feeling. That longing led me to printmaking—specifically, photopolymer etching. It’s a process that rewards patience and intuition. The plate is inked by hand and pressed onto paper, revealing textures and details that can’t be fully controlled. I studied under Dan Weldon, Michael McCabe and Ron Pokrasso who helped me fall in love with the alchemy of it all: ink, metal, pressure, chance.
Eventually, I wanted to break free from structure altogether. Painting gave me that freedom. I started working in layers—acrylic, mark making, pastels—allowing each mark to inform the next. The brush became an extension of breath. The colors came from places I’d traveled or dreamed. Painting lets me move without a plan. It’s all intuition and motion.
My work often circles around gesture and interpretation. Asemic writing—marks that resemble script but carry no fixed meaning—became a natural extension of my process. My series Calligraphy Dreams lives in this space between legibility and feeling. I’m less interested in telling a story than in suggesting one, through movement, repetition, tension, and rhythm.
My travels shape my palette. The ochre walls of Marrakesh, the weathered facades of Venice, the shadows cast by ancient doorways—these moments find their way into my compositions as echoes. I don’t paint what I have seen. I paint what stayed with me.
I’ve shared my work through exhibitions across the country and internationally and am a juried member of several printmaking collectives—including the California Society of Printmakers, Los Angeles Printmaking Society, Santa Barbara Abstract Art Collective, Santa Barbara Printmakers, and Buenaventura inkspots. My work is also part of the permanent collection at Community Memorial Hospital in Ventura, CA, and has appeared in juried exhibitions internationally. But art, to me, isn’t only about what gets framed or hung. It’s also in the teaching, the conversations, the collaborations. I’ve led workshops for foster youth, created hand-printed books from my family’s migration stories, and held space for others to explore their own creative voice.
Whether through the patient rhythm of printmaking or the wild freedom of paint, I create to connect—with memory, with material, and with those who pause long enough to feel what’s beneath the surface.