I live in New Jersey with my husband Joshua and our dog Odin. I love coffee, books, and being creative. This website attempts to display the varied ways I express myself.

I believe an artist creates out of what is given them; spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically.  I desire to create and express what has been given to me, a collection of individual, communal, and vicarious experiences that are only my own in the way they are interpreted and arranged. I am convinced that nothing is truly original but just a reinterpretation of something that already exists. For this reason, my mediums of expression are varied and ever changing. I am open to any material or form that strikes my curiosity. My primary goal in creating is to honor the repurposing of materials and allow the composition to speak. Layering color, line and texture to create depth, reflecting my belief that the more aware we are of our experiences and the more we experience, the greater our depth of understanding. Often people fall in love with the first layer of a painting and protest when I continue working on the piece. But I firmly believe in always pushing beyond the initial comfort to a deeper more thorough understanding of expression and experience so I continue to push my work beyond its first impressions.

The primary component of many of my pieces are cuttings from old magazines, a re-telling of history through today’s visual and cultural lens. In addition I strive to use old, previously used canvases and frames, allowing the prior work on the canvas and the character of the frame to inform my own creation through texture and tonality. In my abstraction, I hope to echo and reflect experiences and emotions common to the human experience, expressing visually what our words often lack.

In collaging, I play with reinterpreting cultural symbols from previous times, sometimes tongue in cheek and sometimes with childlike play of color. My design work attempts to be clean, simple without embellishment, finding the perfect balance between communicating information and visual composition. Finally my floral design provides an outlet for me to play with color and natural composition, allowing the flowers’ organic forms to inform the bouquets and arrangements. I enjoy the temporal beauty and fleeting quality of floral design. Flowers, to me, are one of the purest forms of beauty and color.

No matter the medium or form or motivation, I always find I have left a bit of myself behind on the canvas, paper, etc., in hopes it will provide a reflection for someone else to connect with.

-Adel