I can’t remember when I didn’t want to be an artist.

My earliest art-related memory is of watching my older brother drawing airplanes. I think I was about four. He was enjoying himself, so naturally I wanted to join him. That was the beginning. I wrote to Walt Disney when I was ten, getting a polite letter back telling me they weren’t hiring kids at the moment, and would I please go to art school before applying again.

Art classes sustained me throughout my public school education. While a senior in high school I won a scholarship to a painting program at New York University, and after graduation, I was fortunate to be accepted to the Cooper Union School of Art, a tuition free college in New York where I earned my BFA. A few years later I attended the Boston University School of Fine Arts.

My career began at Random House and Alfred A. Knopf Publishers where I learned how to be a book designer from some very distinguished designers like Betty Anderson and Bob Scudellari. That was my last full time job. When my children were born, I began freelancing. I continued to freelance, designing books and jackets, when we moved to Cambridge while my husband was in graduate school. It was there I discovered that doing my own lettering was a valuable asset for a designer. When we moved up to Maine, I was deeply into lettering, adding ad agencies and corporate and private clients to my assignment lists.

All the while, though, wherever I’ve lived and along with the freelancing, I’ve maintained a studio so I could continue to paint, my first love. Exhibiting here in Maine, across the country and in Europe, my paintings are in both private and corporate collections.

I also teach art. My father would’ve been happy to learn how much I’ve enjoyed teaching. He had hoped to steer me towards teaching when I first entered college, a more promising profession for keeping food on the table in his mind. I’ve worked with children and adults privately at my studio and have taught at several schools and colleges in Maine for more than thirty years. I’m listed as a Juried Education Artist with the Maine Arts Commission. As a visiting artist, I also lead workshops locally as well as traveling to schools and art groups around the country. My father, I’m sure, is smiling.