My art life began when I was nine years old. Before nine a played with crayons and coloring books. I did have a fascination with maps. I use to draw maps of islands. I’m not sure what I knew about continents at that age. But at nine I had a geography homework assignment to draw a village in The Congo from my geography book. I started to draw it and next thing I knew a half an hour had passed and I had a fantastic drawing of an African village. We didn’t know about the right side of the brain back then (at least in the fourth grade) but I had my first adventure over there and brought back my first “masterpiece”.

My best friend’s mother was a painter. She was a truly gifted artist. She brought us to lots of interesting events and places like Greenwich Village and Provincetown, Massachusetts, all the museums as well as Coney Island (not a small memory). I was exposed to great art back then. My best friend and I were always creating stories, plays, art work, always inventing in our very serious and funny play.

To be continued…