I have been involved in art since about the age of 5 when my mother, an artist, gave me a metal paint box with the colors red, yellow, blue, black and white. She said that’s all I needed. As it turns out, she was right in many ways. I still have that old paint box. Eventually, I had access to her paint box that was a gold mine. I have painted at different periods throughout my life in various mediums. Currently, and for the last 15 years, I have been painting in oils. I teach oils, acrylics, and Chinese Brush Painting. I have had training in landscapes, still life, and portraiture. I also like painting interiors and architectural subjects. I use classic and old masters’ techniques, and pay a lot of attention to color theory and the use of limited palettes for better, more captivating paintings. Paying attention to Art History has been useful in areas such as composition, subject matter, expanding knowledge, and finding a sense of “somewhere in time”. In instructing and coaching in the studio, I like to see people get past the “ugly painting stage” which is where many people (in fact, most) give up. Well, that so-called “ugly painting” is merely an underpainting. In other words, it is not yet a finished painting. So, keep on going! Painting is a matter of refining, refining and refining until you exit the painting and nothing in it annoys you. Painting is difficult; you just get better at doing a hard thing. Paintings create a legacy, and the journey is solitary and amazing. Recently I have been working on nocturn (capturing the night) paintings and am about to do a Marilyn Monroe painting. Classes and individual instruction available.