About Fantasy Art

I've been making fantasy art of one sort or another since I was very young. I am mostly self-taught in my drawing skills; my Mom says I've been drawing since I could hang onto a crayon, but I don't remember that far back.

I've also been obsessed with dragons for most of my life; thus you will see several examples in the selections I've included. About 20 years ago I finally figured out what got me hooked on fantasy in general, and dragons in particular: I was maybe 5 or 6 years old when I saw two Disney movies: Fantasia and Sleeping Beauty. Both of those movies greatly affected my young, impressionable mind: in Fantasia it was "Night on Bald Mountain" and "Beethoven's 6th Symphony" (the Pastoral); in Sleeping Beauty it was the sequence in which Maleficent turns herself into the fire-breathing dragon.

I consumed books on mythology throughout my childhood, and around 6th grade discovered fantasy and science fiction (and not much later, Tolkien). All of these have greatly influenced me. But I've always had very specific ideas about how the creatures of myth and fantasy would look: my dragons have to have wings that fit their size (no 50-foot dragons with 6-inch wings for me!), and my unicorns are much more interesting than just pretty white horses with horns on their heads.

My fantasy art is also of great importance to me for one other reason: it led me to the most important person in my life—my husband, John.