Hazel is a Florida native who has lived on the Pensacola Bay for many years.  She spent her career years as a teacher and counselor in the public schools.  She was inspired to draw and paint as she directed the students in high school to follow their inspired directions.  Following retirement from that career, she began the pursuit of a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Pensacola Jr. College and The University of West Florida which she completed in 1999.

Hazel employs graphic media, acrylics and other water media to portray people, places and things that she has captured in visually exciting moments.  She produces works that range from tight reprsentation to subtle abstraction and sometimes to the truly nonobjective.   She finds inspiration from the words of Steven Sondheim in the Sunday in the Park with George.

" Anything you do, let it come from you.  Then it will be new.  Give us more to see."

Hazel has studied with numerous workshop instructors, visited galleries and museums in addition to her formal education.  She has a particular interest in studying the works of the post impressionist especially that of Edouard Vuillard whose major show at the National Gallery of Art she visited in 2003.  She claims she does not anticipate graduating from the status of "student" because that is what gives life to her work.