I am lucky to have been around art for my whole life. My father was very good at drawing. And one of my first memories of drawing was sitting on my father's lap at four or five years of age and "helping" him with a pencil illustration. He encouraged me to draw on the very illustration he was working on. I graduated from The University of Illinois in 1979 with a bachelors in communications. Worked in marketing / advertising for 29 years. Actually owned the agency for 21 of those years. And retired in 2008 to pursue watercolor painting full time. We moved to North Carolina to be closer to our daughter. And once I learned of the great community of artists in Chapel Hill, it seemed like a great place to settle.