How does a person become an artist? There are those who claim study is necessary, but this person I am has always done the intuitive thing. I’ve always learned by doing.

My mother was a child prodigy who could play instruments almost from birth. And she had a pure singing voice. These talents came naturally to her, as they had to her father. It was only natural that when she had a child ~me~ she began to pass her talent on to me. I’m told that as soon as I could say “do, re, mi” I was taught to sing the notes.

By the time I was two, I was singing in public. By the time I entered high school, I was performing in choral groups and musical plays. By eighteen I was considered a triple threat and moved to Europe where I sang in opera houses, performing American musicals in the German language.

Fast forward to the beginning of my fourth decade. I was living and working in Los Angeles, California but no longer performing on the stage. Like so many others before me I learned what I needed to learn to make a living.

I started a freelance sound recording business serving the Motion Picture Industry, but life…meeting financial obligations…all the other uncertainties associated with a small business began to stress me out.

My friends suggested that working with clay might calm my nerves so I picked up a box of polymer sculpting material and began to create. I’m not saying that it was easy, but eventually, I got the hang of it. I let the individual characters flow out of my hands, never consciously making the decision as to who would be born out of the clay.

Learning as I went along, I entered one or two contests, not realizing my work was too small for regular sculpture contests. Finally, I entered my first miniature contest and one of my entries was put on display at the San Bernardino County Museum.

Deciding to learn “how sculpting was really done”, I enrolled in a summer school at Los Angeles Community College where I also took drawing and beginning design. There I discovered acrylic painting. Since that time I’ve assembled more than 20 paintings, and more than 30 small sculptures.

This is how I became an artist.