My sister and me on Ahab, a wonderful Arab gelding I leased in the early 1990's.

I've been a horse lover all of my life. I can't remember a time when I wasn't playing with toy horses, collecting model horses, or riding and caring for the real thing. I come by my horsey obsession honestly, though, as there are generations of horse-mad women on both sides of my family.

I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on April 10, 1978, and spent my first seven years growing up in Chanhassen, a suburb of the Twin Cities. Though I have moved elsewhere since then, Minnesota will always be home to me. Lexington, KY, also owns a piece of my heart, and someday, I wouldn't mind living there. At the moment, Chicago is my windy port-of-call.

My first exposure to real horses came through my grandparents who kept several old pensioners on their farm outside of Zumbro Falls, MN, but I didn't begin riding lessons til I was eight years-old when my family moved to Marietta, GA. I rode English, primarily hunter/jumper, for a number of years until college got in the way, and I now look forward to a time when I can have my own horse. I would love to buy an off-the-track Thoroughbred.

Not surprisingly, I am a devoted fan of horse racing, and have been since Swale captured my heart in 1984. Though I enjoy American dirt racing, I am also a keen follower of racing in the UK, Ireland, France, Dubai, Japan, South Africa, and Australia. My weakness is for turf specialist fillies and stamina-laden sons of Sadler's Wells.

Most people in the hobby know me as a customizer and painter, but I was (and still am) an OF plastic and china collector from the get-go. My model horse addiction began at an early age when my mom found Breyers on clearance at Target once. My first model, purchased that day, was a bay Standing Stock Horse Foal. The collection didn't really take off until after we moved to GA where I met collector Lisa Rowland at a Breyer signing party in 1989. I bought a herd of wonderful vintage horses from her, and learned alot about the history of the hobby. Three thousand models later, my mom, Ruth-Ann, and my younger sister, Sarah, have joined me in the madness. My mom is a china head and has a lovely collection of Hagen-Renakers, Royal Worcesters, Rosenthals, and other fine European chinas. She lets us play with her horses at live shows, ha ha. Sarah is a fledgling customizer who is a dab hand at zebras and quaggas---check out her webpage, Safari Studio, for her awesome (and NAN qualified) work.

I began customizing in earnest back in October of 1999---on a whim (it was pay day), I went through the art supply section at the UGA campus bookstore, and bought some gesso and some Grumbacher acrylic paint. That night in my dorm room, I created my very first "real" custom. She was a Britains drafter repainted to a nifty black and white tobiano Gypsy Vanner. I stuck with minis at first, especially in faux decorator colors, until I got an airbrush for my birthday the following April. My first airbrushed horse was Counterpoint, the Breyer SM WB repainted to a sorrel overo. When I started, I intended him to be a solid palomino, but the shading looked so cool that I just kept adding color. He's still one of my favorite customs. Bay tobiano has become my signature color and one of my favorites to paint, but I pretty much paint the full spectrum of horse colors and patterns and then some. I am, however, still working on my appaloosas. I am big equine color genetics geek (see my horse color website), so I pride myself on creating realistic colors and patterns.

Me beside the grave of 1970 English Triple Crown winner Nijinsky at Claiborne Farm in 2004

 And now, just for the heck of it, some random trivia about me:

Breeds I'm Partial To: TBs, Arabs, Highland Ponies, Connemaras, Clydesdales, ASBs, Andalusians, Hackneys, Welsh Sections C and D, Dales, Fell Ponies, anything with an exciting pinto pattern :-)

Favorite Racehorses: Ipi Tombe (the Zimbabwe-bred super-filly), Man O'War (the best horse of this century, bar none), Barbaro, Makybe Diva (Australia's greatest horse), Spectacular Bid, Count Fleet, The Tetrarch, Mumtaz Mahal, Ruffian, Swale, Nijinsky, Ferdinand, Unbridled, Point Given, Officer, Beat Hollow, Crimson Palace, Six Perfections, Heat Haze, Folklore, Wild Fit, Dubawi, and Kitten's Joy. I have a page dedicated to the greats of horse racing history in the works--check it out!

Favorite Racehorses Still in Training: Premium Tap, Jazil, Dreaming of Anna, Hurricane Run, Yeats, The White Fox, Funny Cide, and Wilko.

Favorite Books: mysteries revolving around antiques, antiquities, and the supernatural (especially by Barbara Michaels/Elizabeth Peters and Dana Cameron), Rita Mae Brown (and Sneaky Pie) mysteries, Jane Austen's novels, George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series, anything Tolkien, good historical fiction, bios of racehorses, anything by C. W. Anderson :-) I'm also addicted to J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series.

Favorite Movies/TV: 300, Braveheart, Orlando, Pirates of the Caribbean, Sense and Sensibility, Elizabeth, The Red Violin, Le Pacte des Loups (Brotherhood of the Wolf), Chronicles of Riddick, Serenity, Shakespeare in Love, The Wicker Man, Rob Roy (can you tell that I like costume dramas?), Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch, Mean Machine (I adore Vinnie Jones), Greenfingers, Phar Lap, The Black Stallion, The Black Stallion Returns, Seabiscuit, all of the Indiana Jones movies, The Matrix, Dogma, The Sting, Charade, Roman Holiday, Disney's Sleeping Beauty, anything by the Monty Python gang (except Brazil), Monarch of the Glen, Black Adder, Jonathan Creek, Lovejoy, The Young Ones (Vyvyan!!), CSI, Firefly, Dead Like Me, and especially the Simpsons

Favorite Music: "Recent" bands: Nirvana, The Offspring, Rancid, The Clash, the Sex Pistols, Tori Amos, Sarah McLachlan, Soundgarden, Madness, XTC, The Pogues, Delerium, the Cruxshadows, Faith and the Muse, Rasputina, Switchblade Symphony, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Cure, some Depeche Mode, the Beatles; Many Celtic Bands: Loreena McKennitt, Seven Nations, Clandestine, Andy Stewart, Enya; lots of classical music, particularly Tschaikovsky; the Gypsy Kings, the Romeros; a variety of metal, goth, industrial, and ska...

Other Weird Hobbies: cross stitch, studying equine color genetics (see my pages on the subject), collecting fruit jars (Ball jars and what not---I dug one up a few years ago at Christmas in an abandoned farmhouse---turned out to be 80 years old, so being the history geek that I am, I'm now hooked), collecting state quarters, learning more Latin (the only good language is a dead language) and Attic Greek and French and German, and one of these days, Gaelic, writing fiction (horses and history, mostly), studying TB pedigrees and histories, random historical trivia....