Art started for me when I was seven. My grandmother, Clyne, paid for me to take oil painting classes from a local artist. With my wooden painter’s box filled with fresh new tubes of oil paints and all the recommended brushes, canvases, and mixing mediums, I walked the one and a half blocks to see my art teacher once a week. I loved those two hours I spent each week in Lane Mitchel’s converted garage.  Loved the smell of the paints, loved the feel of the different types of brushes on the canvas, loved the intensity of the colors on a fresh bare canvas. When I close my eyes, I can still see my teacher’s face, with her wire-framed reading spectacles partway down her nose, her dark hair with streaks of silver gray twisted and piled up on top of her head, and a paintbrush always sticking out of her hair bun. At the age of seven, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Little did I know that it would take me over 30 years to reach the age of “grown-up”. Now that I’m here and I’m doing what I love, I remember what it felt like to receive instruction, guidance, support and inspiration from my first teacher all those years ago. As life tends to happen, I have come full circle back to where I began, but now I wish to share what I have learned and provide the support and inspiration each striving artist desires. Much as my mentor did those many years ago.