About Me

I started my career in 1995 when a talented photographer with a small design studio took a chance on a young self-taught digital artist, obsessed with Photoshop and Illustrator. He saw the potential in me and taught me the fundamentals of brochure and business card design, also utilizing my Photoshop skills for photo retouching. 

I went on to perform freelance work, photo retouching and restoration for a portrait studio, graphics for independent magazines and regional newspapers, assisted with product packaging for a doll company, designed and hand-coded early websites, and crafted the document icons for Graphic Converter by Lemkesoft in 2001. 

In 2007 I was hired and quickly promoted to the full-time role of Director of Graphic Design for Madison Marquette, a national commercial real estate company, where I served for 8 years. While I was there, I was responsible for all graphic design for the west coast offices, then most of the east coast as well. I personally created executive presentation decks, billboards, advertisements, trade show booth graphics, which included: fabric banners, video displays, marketing collateral such as brochures, booklets, trade magazine covers and more. I even assisted with and fully implemented a complete brand refresh for the entire company.

I left Madison Marquette on great terms at the end of 2015 to move to Portland, where I continued to do freelance work for Madison and other commercial real estate companies like Centennial and Vestar while I worked a day job as the receptionist of a busy front desk in a high end accounting firm, for 6 years. I left that role in May 2023 so I could focus on learning and personal/professional skill development.

I now live in a suburb of Portland, OR with my other-half of 19 years. We have a lovely little home where I watch the squirrels play through the window while I work on personal and professional design projects. Over the past several months, I have been learning to code in Python and exploring art creation with generative AI, using tools like Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, and of course, generative fill in Photoshop, my first love..