I am an old lady like my mother before me - expressing emotion with paint and line. It is the meditation, it is the party.

I was born in the 50's in Santa Monica, California. When I was 7, we (Mom, Dad, my brother Paul and me) moved from our rented house on 17th St. in Santa Monica, not far from the Busy Bee Hardware store, to our first home on Milwood Avenue in Venice, CA. 1964.

Living in Venice between 1964 and 1973 was a lot more homey than people might imagine. With some crazy juxtapositions.

In 1973 we moved back to Santa Monica, to a big house, 2 blocks from Santa Monica City College, 12 blocks to the high school, 14 blocks from the beach.

While I tried a lot of things (stained glass was the one I really glommed onto) I was 40 before I jumped feet first into a painting class. A trompe 'loeil oil painting class through UCLA extension. The UCLA extension building in Santa Monica was in close proximity to the Pussycat Theater. I had a wonderful instructor named Emmanuel Cosentino, who had one ambition - to have his work hang in museums. Not galleries. Museums. I had never heard of such a thing.

From there I took two consecutive classes in mural painting and trompe 'loeil at the old Otis College of Art and Design in downtown Los Angeles* with another very good teacher and sociologically-inclined portrait painter, Richard Shelton. Those high-ceilinged, concrete classrooms were SO HOT in the summer. No a/c, baby!

Except for a workshop once in a blue moon, that's my formal learnin'.

*Otis moved it's campus to Westchester, CA (near LAX) in 2016.