The first few years of my life were spent in Cheyenne, Wyoming after being born in North Platte, Nebraska. When I was 10 years old we moved to Argentina, South America where we lived for 2 ½ years. While we were there my mom took portrait lessons, in oil, from an old master. I was the model. That is really the only remembrance I have of my mom painting while I was small. In 1972 my family moved to Pierre, South Dakota and purchased a small amount of land where we raised several horses. Although I did not draw them at that time, I truly loved being around the horses, the hay, the barn, and the cats. For several years I worked in pencil and color pencil drawing many, many ducks and geese which made their home or migrated through that area.
I was a teenager when I made my first sale, a pen and ink of a zebra, and one of my teachers bought it. That was very exciting! I exhibited in a couple of very small art shows with my mom before I went off to college. In 1982 I married my sweetheart Jim Sigle who has since been very supportive of my art career. We have three wonderful children.
A few years later my mom took a watercolor class and fell in love with the medium. She strongly urged me to try it and so one day we sat side by side and she gave me a simple watercolor lesson. We lived a few hours away from each other, so with that small lesson I took what I learned and invested many hours practicing. After a considerable struggle and several discarded paintings later, I was producing some keepers. I also went through a period of time drawing portraits in pencil. I have drawn hundreds of faces so I feel I know the human face quite well. Once, when I had an order for a 50th Wedding Anniversary gift, I had been working on the drawing for quite awhile and it was almost complete. I went to the basement to change a load of laundry and when I came back to the drawing, there was a small orange hand print in the middle of the ladies face. My 1 1/2 year old daughter had innocently wanted to see what I had been working on and unfortunately had been eating m&m’s. I should have saved the drawing to show her years later, but instead my husband took very fine sand paper and was able to completely get rid of the orange. I then redrew the face since they were coming to pick it up the next day.
My show schedule currently takes me places like Las Vegas; Great Falls, Mt.; Jackson Hole, Wy.; and the Denver area to name a few. I attend around 8-10 art shows a year. I also contribute to benefit auctions and work with a few galleries. Another enjoyable part of my career is gathering reference material from working ranches or wildlife areas since I want to capture the authentic western way of life, to paint and portray the real thing. I am a signature member of the Northern Plains Watercolor Society and a signature member of The Artists of the Black Hills. Currently I paint everyday. My work can be seen at numerous Galleries throughout the Midwest.