My mother taught me to draw cartoon characters when I was 5 years old. I drew Betty and Veronica comics in the margins of my grade school class notes. I dabbled with watercolor in middle school. I painted Spanish arches and people portraits before college. I loved trying to achieve a great likeness with pencil and watercolor. I did not study art in college. Not practical, right?

For 40 years I helped manufacturing business employees make sense of computer business applications as a business analyst, programmer and project manager. I retired in 2017. Then I started doing what I had wanted to do all along!

After two weeks cruising around Japan with my husband Rand, I dove into online courses in photography, calligraphy, bullet journaling, drawing, urban sketching and watercolor painting. I joined my local urban sketching group. I started taking in person community college sketching and watercolor courses. Almost immediately, I joined my local art association. In February 2019 I started entering my beginning watercolor paintings in local competitions.

Three years later in 2022 I started winning honorable mention ribbons. I also started a pet and people portrait watercolor commission business. A year later I had immediate success using Yelp ads to find pet and people portrait clients locally.

In February of 2023, I won a first place ribbon! On the same day (!!!), I released week one of my first online course, “Create Your Own Original Art”™. What a blue ribbon day!

Just one week after “Create Your Own Original Art™” ended, a student, who had friended me on Facebook, was showing and selling her art on social media! I was so proud of her and the work we had done together!

In May 2023 I was compelled to pursue my passion of showcasing women artists to aspiring artists around the world with “Paint Your Way To…: Women Share Their Lives As Artists In Exclusive Interviews”™.

In September of 2024 “Paint Your Way To…: Artists From Around The World Share Their Lives In Exclusive Interviews™” featured an international crew of female and male artists from India, Ukraine, Austria, Denmark, Canada and the USA.

In April 2024, I started the Artist Journey Community™, a safe place for a frazzled aspiring artist-to-be to co-create four times a month on Zoom with like-minded individuals from around the world who all learn the basic tools to make original art in their own style every time and set up a basic art business when they are ready.

Are you interested in finally realizing your lifelong artist dream with the Artist Journey Community™? Press the “Learn More about AJC!” button below.