I knew at a young age that I liked drawing; but I didn't know that art was going to become so much a part of my life until ninth grade.  On the first day of art class at Wilmington High School in Ohio,  My teacher, James McCarty (Mac), posed a student at the front of the class and told the rest of us to draw her.  I had been trying to draw her entire body so the result after the short class session was a small line drawing that only roughly resembled her basic hair shape, etc. with no real likeness.  Mac was complimentary, though, and encouraged me to draw larger next time even if it meant just drawing the head and shoulders.  The class did this same exercise each day with a different model.  By the fourth day, I had clearly captured the model's likeness, and I was hooked on portraiture.

Although I have no formal art training since graduation; during those four years of high school, Mac instructed, encouraged, and critiqued.  He sent supplies home with me and told me to create, create, create.  The class did exercises in pencil, pen & ink, pastel, watercolor, and sculpture.  We did landscapes, still lifes, portraits, and figure studies.  We had slide show lectures in art history and recognizing famous artist styles (although I can't say I have retained a lot of that).  Every year, Mac entered our best pieces in a scholastic competition and took us on the weekend to see the show.  Each year he took the entire art class by bus to the Cincinnati Art Museum and one year even took us to Canton (the other side of the state) so that we could see the largest collection of Andrew Wyeth artwork before it was split up and shipped around the world.  Although I have continued to teach myself through practice and reading other artist techniques, I owe most of what I know about art to Mac.  Coming from a low-income background, I would probably never have seen half of the artworks that inspired me or had the supplies to produce pieces with if not for his having gone above and beyond. 

Since high school, I have done many commissioned portraits as well as paintings of animals, buildings, etc.  I didn't think ahead to keep photographs of most of them and can't even remember a lot of them.  Ever the responsible youth, I did not pursue art as a career.  Something about "starving artist" didn't appeal to me, so I focused on a business career instead and did the commissioned artwork on the side.  I became a real estate appraiser in 1992 and became so busy with my "day job" that there was very little artistic creativity time.  My husband and I now run our own appraisal business and have a more comfortable pace in that business so I can pursue my other interests more. 

In the past few years, I began mostly creating pieces of art for myself and for reprinting rather than taking on portrait commissions.  This year, however, I have begun accepting commissions again.  My latest interest (or rather a re-awakening of an earlier dream) has been to be a writer and illustrator.  Our local librarian, after seeing my artwork--which consists largely of children--has given me much encouragement regarding doing childrens book illustration.  This website was one of the first steps in that direction...so...here I am!