I stared doing travel gouaches in the 1980's, basically small gouache paintings along with my travel  foto's as exercises, as sketches. I always considered my foto's as sketches and much of my representational work has been based on my own foto sketches. My view is that painting brings into the imagery a different abstract quality so different than a foto.  I began scuba diving with my than boyfriend Tom Fitzgibbon who was a certified diver. I would try to remember what compositions I saw on the dive and than paint or draw them after. I finally got certified in 2013 after many many resort dives. When underwater camera's became more affordable I started diving with a camera, very simple ones, point and shoot.

My experiences of scuba diving have been very influential to my paintings and drawings. The literal sense of moving dimension-ally in space be it in water but the relationship between the earth and body and total movement is like nothing else on earth.  I no longer think of air as empty space but as thin thin water that we live in, just like fish in the sea. The life in the water, it's creatures, it's plants and algae is primal the beginnings of life forms and colors- it's extraordinary. 

My other travel gouaches can be found in my archive.