I was born and raised in suburban New Jersey, and went to college in Ohio, majored in English, and afterwards worked as an editor, first in New York and later in Baltimore, where I had moved with my graduate student husband. It was then that I was persuaded to try a drawing class at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Up to now, I had never gone near an art class before and had never had much interest in the subject.
The teacher armed us with vine charcoal and some big sheets of newsprint. He set up a simple still life on a table and suggested the time-honored technique of "drawing what you see, not what you know" to reproduce its contours on paper. Somehow, by the end of the session, I had managed to divorce my overactive left brain and created a drawing that actually looked like a table. I had never been so impressed with myself. I had assumed artistic ability was something you were born with, or not. Now it dawned on me that I could learn this. Also, it was fun.
I launched myself into a series of drawing, painting and design classes. When none were available – as I moved around the country with my growing family -- I sought out more advanced painters for advice. Thus my art education includes no degree, but study with and advice from some remarkable painters in a number of schools: Pamela Black at Piedmont Virginia Community College, Philip Geiger at the University of Virginia, Scott Noel, Bill Scott, and Moe Brooker at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, and Barry Nemett and Stuart Abarbanel at the Maryland Institute College of Art. An essay on color by Ken Kewley, whom I never met, continues to be a go-to inspiration.
I soon learned that even within traditional oil painting there is a dizzying array of techniques, styles, and subjects to choose from. Now museums, galleries, and art books were my friends. My favorite painters to begin with were Vermeer, Chardin, and Corot. Also Rachel Ruysch, a still life painter in the 18th and 19th