Biography

Having started out life in Connecticut but grown up in Canada, England, Switzerland and France, I spent a good deal of time in my youth attending the requisite boarding schools. The little art instruction that was part of these curricula was rudimentary at best; certainly not fodder for a future career, but that didn′t stop me from always having a pencil in my hand and receiving many a reprimand for drawing in class when I should have been paying attention to the lessons at hand.

I have wanted to paint for as long as I can remember. As a child, even though I was not particularly encouraged, my Christmas and birthday wish lists always were replete with requests for paint sets, and on one or two occasions when I was taken to the toy store and given permission to make a selection, it would be a no-brainer. I would head straight for the art section.

Yes, I dreamed of becoming an artist, but I was taught that this was a hobby, not a career. After all, one could not "make a living" in such a pursuit and I was steered firmly into the business world. Those were the days when one simply did – at least a fairly timid youngster such as I was in those days did – what your parents told you to do.

So at the age of 22, well prepared for a "proper" career, off I went from London to New York, where I excitedly landed a job at National Geographic. I was with that amazing organization for a total of 34 years, transferring to the Washington headquarters after 15 and finally retiring as Vice President in charge of strategic and financial planning for the magazine division, not once during that entire time so much as picking up a paintbrush or sketching a scene. My art career never got started – that is, until I retired and promptly hung up my briefcase, jumping with both feet and full speed into my long-repressed passion.

I began with still lifes, because it just seemed as if they would not be all that difficult. After all, you see an apple on a table, you copy the image onto a canvas! That particular assessment, of course, served only to demonstrate the naïveté of my knowledge in this arena. Composition, however, came fairly naturally to me. In fact I already instinctively practiced many of the "rules" I later learned. But I had yet to face so many things I hadn′t even thought about – light, the science of color, paint application, types of brushes, etc., not to mention the fact that I would gradually be looking to find my voice, build my style. I studied still lifes and florals and landscapes, from books, videos and professionals and what was intended as a hobby quickly developed into an unexpected and most rewarding full-time profession.