I was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, received a BA in Art from The University of Texas at Austin, and an MFA in Painting from Yale University School of Art.

Yale awarded me with three things while I was in graduate school from 1992 to 1994; a scholarship which paid for around half of my tuition, the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Trust Fellowship which paid my salary as a teaching assistant at the Yale University Summer School of Music and Art, and upon graduating from Yale I was awarded the Ely Harwood Schless Memorial Fund Prize, which was the highest honor the faculty awarded to a graduating MFA.

I have continued to exhibit nationally on both coasts. My work has been featured in numerous publications including Artforum, ARTnews, Los Angeles Times, Southwest Art, and Artweek.

Of the awards I received since leaving graduate school, the most significant are the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fund Fellowship in Painting in 2008, the Rosenthal Family Award for Painting from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2008, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award, which I received in 2001.