In my medical career, I pursued Internal Medicine and became triple board-certified in Internal Medicine, Geriatrics, and Hospice and Palliative Care. For forty years, I worked in various medical settings, from serving in the National Public Health Service Corps in rural Nebraska, private group practice, geriatric practice, hospitalist, hospice, and palliative care, to teaching and caring for patients at academic centers. I

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I found in order to be a healer, I needed to find a “healing practice” for myself. Starting in my thirties, I took art classes and workshops, including accredited courses at the Washburn University and the Kansas City Art Institute. Through my art, I reconnected with my first loves: rekindling my fascination with nature, the color and patterns around me, and of flora and fauna of biology. As a girl in Atchison, KS I had often pretended to be Sacajawea, leading Lewis and Clark along the Missouri River bluffs. Art enabled me to continue my love of discovery and exploration in new ways. Art harnessed that youthful spirit of adventure, giving me the energy I needed to find balance and a path to healing. Art enabled me to be the scientist and physician, to serve those in need, and the empathy to experience the full set of human emotions with my patients in their path to healing.

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Art empowered me to visually and creatively connect my work as both an artist and physician. For the next forty years, I acquired a variety of art skills, culminating in a three-year master’s class in surface art design with Jane Dunnewold. My art had always been influenced by my life’s work in the healing arts. In my undergraduate studies at Washburn University in biology and chemistry, I also enjoyed the humanities like art, dance, literature, piano. At Kansas University Medical School I was fascinated with microscopic images and excelled at courses requiring visual skills, including histology, embryology, and pathology. (My notes on embryology are archived at the University of Kansas Medical School). My landscapes and painting en Plein Aire restores my soul.  My silk paintings explore the shapes of cells and pathologies and express my soul through color and form. In art, my worlds are united and that has made all the difference to my health and energy. 

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I joined my two worlds of art and medicine! During my medical career as an academic hospitalist at Truman Medical Center, I developed a course on Art and Medicine through the humanities department. As an adjunct professor, I teach at the University of Kansas City School of Medicine in the Humanities Department. Now I hope to bring the course lessons to health care professionals and the community, as lectures or workshops.

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Now I’m leading the creative life of my dreams. I am grateful to my husband, Grant, of 40+ years, for his patience, kindness, and love.  He is passionate about historic preservation, restoring eight homes, and now restoring an 1884 home in historic Hyde Park, KCMO. I am also grateful that my beloved children moved nearby. My son is a professional musician and my daughter is a registered nurse. I am enjoying family life and playing with my three grandsons. 

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Now I can bring my healing art and my healing practice to you! To share what I have acquired and nurtured for myself to your space through art, workshops, and classes. As a health practitioner, I know there is more to health than medicine. There needs to be the intention, mindfulness, creativity, and integration of healing methods for the mind-body-spirit. For a healer to heal, the same techniques of their ancient ancestors are needed: listen, touch, feel, observe and pray. This is learned through healing mentors, patient experience, and life experiences. Let me share with you how I see a daily path to beauty, peace, and appreciation of the world around us. 

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• Healing Art Workshops for Groups

• Meditative Silk Painting Workshop for Cancer Survivors and Health Professionals

• Art & Medicine Course for Medical Students, Physicians and Nurses, and Allied Healthcare Students

• Healing Arts Lecture Series for Medical Professionals and for anyone who would like to know about my course

• Silk Art and Complex Cloth Paintings from Nature and Medicine, for sale

• Oil and pastel Paintings from nature, for sale

• Ghost Ranch Landscapes Exhibits, 

• Portraiture and life drawing

• Vision Quest a traveling art show of work inspired by ophthalmological technology

• Art and Science a lecture about the influence of science and math in visual art