Profile

Art was not a thing I did as a child. I don’t remember being encouraged as a child to draw and coloring inside the lines was impossible for me. When I was 15 years old, my mother asked me if I wanted to take painting lessons at a local art gallery. Somewhat perplexed, I said that I would because she bribed me with a visit to the village bakery after each lesson. What I did not know was that my mother saw an artist in me. When did that happen? She had observed me cut a figure out of construction paper with scissors without drawing it first, for a school project while looking at a photograph. She said that it was exactly like the figure in the photo. My first painting is framed and on display in the art room. Mrs. Beth Thompson was my first art teacher in high school and her life as an artist away from school was so intertwined with her life of teaching art that somehow I knew that was what I wanted my path in life to be. I attended the University of South Alabama earning a Bachelor’s and a Master’s Degree in Art Education. The past 35 years has seen me teach in Mobile, Alabama, Knoxville, Tennessee, and for the last 25 years in Alcoa, Tennessee. Teaching and making art have always made me happy but I still cannot stay inside the lines.