Currently, I am a versatile artist in Buda, TX working in many mediums, navigating motherhood and adulthood while piecing together an art business and a career teaching art. In my artwork, I love painting what I see with a hint of memory, feelings, and energetic lines or texture to communicate focus and emotion. Usually, I work from life or photographs to start with, then finish up from memory to ensure loose, fun and unpredictable surprises for lasting interest. I am deeply connected to faith and nature in my artwork and I try to honor them in my pieces. Most of my artwork is completed in acrylic, watercolor, and oils with possible additions of drawing materials.

I grew up in Olathe and Overland Park, Kansas and declared at the age of 13 that I “wanted to be an artist.” Shortly thereafter, I drew a portrait of Leonardo DiCaprio (think Romeo and Juliet teenage heart-throb days), made copies at Kinkos, and sold them out of my locker at school - an origin story I will always get a smile from! In Kansas, I had the pleasure of learning from renowned sculpture artist and oil painter, Kwan Wu, as well as from Lee Hammond, bestselling North Light author with a full line of instructional DVDs and more than 30 drawing and painting books.

I went on to get a BFA in Studio Art from Oklahoma Baptist University where I was awarded the Outstanding Senior Artist Award. OBU gave me the reigns to create the education I desired, and I loved it. 

Within six months of graduating college, I found myself in Austin, TX where I showed my artwork in various places, and began growing a family soon after. I found joy in teaching art through working at Painting With a Twist, and found my true teaching voice in facilitating after school art clubs for Elementary school students (Art With Gena!). Now, you can find me around Buda, TX building the art community (#budaartsmovement), creating in my home art studio or on windows around town, doing the things that make an art business functional, stopping my kids from fighting or experimenting with food. I currently volunteer at the Buda Public Library facilitating free art classes once a month, and am teaching fine art courses at Inspired Minds Art Center in Buda, TX.

Now, teaching art is how I give back to the community I am a part of; it gives me a place in this world. Building others in their creative confidence and artistic knowledge is a life goal of mine, right alongside me creating art for people to buy and hang in their homes and to remind us of what is beautiful and good.