Personal History

As a child, I was always drawing and painting. All my life, I’ve always wanted to paint. My parents told me that I inherited my artistic talent from my relatives, who were artists. My grandmother and my uncle were my early mentors. Grandmother created beautiful rustic scenes of the Wisconsin woods using miniature colored beads, and my uncle painted murals of the wooded scenes. Living in Northern Wisconsin, nature has always been an inspiration for me. I was one of the few people living in Wisconsin who did not get excited about a deer or pheasant that became a meal or a trophy for the hunter.

Throughout elementary school, my teacher called upon me to do the traditional colored chalk drawings on the blackboard depicting the various holidays. I began a more formal study of art in junior high and high school, where I was the art editor for the school’s yearbook. After graduation from high school, I moved to Chicago and attended the University of Chicago and the Art Institute of Chicago. At the University of Chicago, I studied fine arts, and at the Art Institute of Chicago, I studied drawing and painting under Professor Juhre’, a well-known French artist at the Institute. As a student of art, I had the honor of having one of my nude pastel drawings selected to hang in an exhibition at the Frank Lloyd Wright Robie House. At that time, I also started painting commissioned portraits for money to purchase paints. However, I soon stopped because each family member had a different perception of how the person whom I painted should look.

When I moved to Pittsburgh, I took fine arts courses at the University of Pittsburgh, and because of my desire to know more about the mysteries of the mind and human behavior, I also took psychology courses. After my divorce, I had to work to support my children. Ironically, at the same time, I was advised by art critics in Pittsburgh that my next step was to take my work to New York. Obviously, this was not an option. I divided my time between painting, working, going to school at night, directing a cooperative artists’ gallery, and teaching yoga. I had several great opportunities to study in Europe, and I copied the classical paintings I saw in the Louvre and the Tate Gallery. However, as a single parent supporting my children, I soon realized that I could not pursue a career in fine arts, and so I decided to get a Ph.D. in communications and teach.

Initially, after moving to the Washington, DC area, I did not have the time to investigate galleries and explore the possibilities for exhibiting my work because of the demands of the new job and taking care of my children. I remarried, and a month later I learned that I had breast cancer. (Fortunately, it was microscopic and I didn’t need follow-up chemotherapy after surgery.) This experience, the recent stillbirth of my youngest daughter’s son, and the death of my parents provoked quite a lot of fear, anxiety, and grief, which are obviously manifested in my “Connections” exhibit at Foundry Gallery.