Brenda is an award-winning artist working primarily in oils both on location and in the studio. She started painting at the age of five when her mother, while teaching private art classes, encouraged her to paint her first oil painting. This early introduction to the process of sketching and outdoor painting was instrumental to her interest in and love of landscape.

     "It is great reverence for our relationship to the natural world that entices me to paint. The Grand Canyon and other sacred and stunning landscapes are deeply inspirational to me as an artist. My art making is on some level about the mystery and sharing my response to experiences in nature. The colors, textures, and patterns revealed by dramatic light inspire me."

     She graduated with a B.A. from California State University at Fullerton, and studied art at Orange Coast College, Fullerton College, Tulsa Community College and Scottsdale Artists¹ School. She has continuously studied the art of master painters in art museums, being particularly inspired by Thomas Moran, Gunnar Widforss, Carl Oscar Borg, Georgia O¹Keeffe, and Edgar Payne.

     Brenda worked more than twenty years as a graphic designer and technical/geological illustrator, which led her to a successful freelance business. But fine art kept calling her, and after spending a year in India and traveling in Europe and Australia, she decided to immerse herself in her favorite place to paint, the Grand Canyon. She came to live at the South Rim in 1999 and stayed for four years. In the tradition of Gunnar Widforss and other artists that made Grand Canyon home, this experience transformed her work and changed her life. It was at Grand Canyon that she found a great response to her paintings, which are now in many collections in the U.S. and abroad. Now based in Northern New Mexico, she travels and paints throughout the west.