My background in making art began when I decided in my early thirties  I wanted to decorate my apartment with my own paintings. My day job was working as an academic advisor at Oklahoma State University. At nights I began copying book covers that I enjoyed from classics such as Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” and William Faulkner’s “The Sound and the Fury.” I majored in English while at UALR and then got a master’s degree in the subject at the UofA Fayetteville. From book covers and decorated walls I moved to painting the portraits of the professors in my department at OSU and giving them as gifts. Professors commented that I should start selling my work, and soon after I started doing Oklahoma landscapes and OSU campus scenes and selling them at a local arts and crafts fairs in Stillwater. I frequently came back to my home state of Arkansas where I did paintings of South Arkansas, near my family home in Felsenthal. I sold those at our local Bream Festival each May. In 2022 I decided to relocate permanently to Arkansas and have been working exclusively at creating art to sell since I moved home. My first and only gallery show thus far was the open group show at the South Arkansas Arts Center in December 2022. I look forward to future shows and more activity as a professional artist in Arkansas.