When I returned home after that trip I purchased some tools, set up a small workspace in the guest bedroom of my home, and began experimenting with silver and gold. Gemstones were always a part of my work and continue to inspire what I create.

Before I began working with precious metals and gems, I was an oil painter. I received my first set of oil paints as a gift around the time I was eight years old and a loving union was established. I mostly painted portraits although more recently landscapes have become my muse. I am not shy of colour, though there is a specific palette range of warm, fleshy hues that appeal to me most and carry through different aspects of my visual world and aesthetic choices. This can be seen in the jewellery as well. My first degree is in oil painting from the Ontario College of Art & Design.

The thing about painting is that it always felt to me like a struggle. There was seldom a moment of peace as I grappled with different ideas that never came out quite right on canvas. I felt the limitations of my skill level, despite many years of practice. It always felt as though I was having an inner conflict and never quite getting to the place I hoped to feel, a sense of homeostasis and harmony that told me a piece was complete. From the first days of working with metals and semi-precious stones, this harmony was no longer elusive to me. I could feel it with nearly every piece completed.

The painterly aspect of the stones entices the painter in me. Increasingly, I see my metal work as a creation of frames for the unique natural art of the gemstones. There is a visceral response that certain stones and stone combinations evoke that is similar to the visceral quality that I love about oil paints.

The process of making is, for me, also the designing stage. Assembling the stones and creating combinations that feel good in my bones is the first step. When I play around with stones to find a pairing it is not a mental process, rather a feeling one. I feel a certain inherent balance in some mismatched pairings that guides subsequent design choices for the piece. Symmetry is not the goal, but there is a definite feeling of balance that I am seeking. The rest falls into place from there as I hand fabricate the settings organically, bit by bit. Thus, the stones and metals are my muse.

As I learn more about myself as a human being, I have discovered that what is important to me is to be real, rather than perfect. My work feels like a mirror in that sense–I am striving to capture something real about the stones, the silver and the gold. The process may remain apparent in the finished piece, imperfections included, as opposed to polishing out all signs of how the piece was created. That is my intention: to celebrate true, honest beauty.