Born in Burkina Faso, I spent my childhood in many West African countries including the Ivory Coast and Guinea, where I became fluent in Mandingo, English and French. I moved to the U.S. when I was eighteen and subsequently to Canada where I have remained for almost 20 years. Ottawa is where I developed my passion for painting.

My art expresses my sense of being an African woman, using mixed media and the visual language of western art. I incorporate design elements that I learned when dyeing textiles with my older sister, as well as the suggestions of forms that I observed in locally produced sculptures and masks from my village.

I interweave those elements with layers of texture, a rich variety of collage materials, acrylic paint, modeling gels, and sometimes mementos and images that hold special meaning. Many of my paintings are pictorial metaphors – visual poetry. My work comes from an inner spring that delights in the patchwork interplay of colours, shapes, textures, and symbols.