My earliest childhood memories include me standing at an easel working in tempera on newsprint. It was 1973 and I was in kindergarten. My teacher, Mrs. Hayes, had trouble getting me away from the easel and had to tell me more than once to clean up and move on to the next activity. All I wanted to do was stay at my easel and paint the landscape view from our classroom window. Fast forward to my high school years when my parents thankfully one Christmas, gifted me painting classes at a local art studio, The Art Room. I took several classes for a few years (painting - oils, watercolor, and life drawing) until going off to college to pursue first an associate’s degree in fine arts from the Junior College of Albany, then onto pursuing an undergraduate degree in painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), eventually earning a BFA in Studio Art from the University of New Mexico (UNM). In between studying at MICA and attending UNM, I studied at School 33 in Baltimore, Maryland, and The Art Student’s League, New York.