I grew up in a rural area of Washington, known as the Palouse. As a child, I was passionate about playing dress up, creating props for my American girl dolls, and inventing characters for made up books. When I was thirteen, I got to be in an art class for a few months at school. I relished the fifty-minute class with artist, Henry Stinson. At the end of the semester, Mr. Stinson came up to me and said, “Anna, don’t stop making art.” These words felt like permission for me to be an artist.
While I continued to watercolor and draw outside of school, I didn’t consider studying art until my sophomore year of college at Whitworth University. One night, I made a list of all the jobs that sounded exciting to me. Almost all of the list was made up of creative pursuits. I realized that I had always been an artist, and it was time to honor that passion by studying art. I quickly fell in love with oil painting, appreciating it as a place to explore color, shape, inner tension, and passion for creativity.