Welcome to my website where cool things are happening. Grab a libation and take a few to look at the art and read about my upcoming publications. And thank you for stopping by!
Author
Why I write…
My mother taught me to love books at a very young age, and she read to me every day from the time I was a baby, until the day she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. My mother was a pianist and an artist, and she spoke Spanish until ECT took away her memory, ruining her creativity. But I have never forgotten the many hours we read together, and when I was the young age of nine, I began reading more advanced books like Heidi, Jane Eyre, Little Women and For Whom the Bell Tolls. I was a voracious journal keeper, recording my life in diaries and notebooks, writing letters to my friends and family, so the journey of writing has been with me since I was old enough to load a pencil. My first written book, “Someday You Will Understand,” is about my life growing up with two mentally ill parents. My father was diagnosed with bipolar disorder a few years after my mother was diagnosed.
My second book, “Conversations With the Tuesday Night Girls,” is published with Amazon. “Conversations” is a collection of short stories about a group of women in their 50s and 60s, who gather every Tuesday night on my friend, Diane’s porch in nice weather or in Diane’s Farmhouse kitchen to chat about everything known to man, from garage sales to goiters, from science fiction to politics, from cooking to sex, we cover it all with a hint of humor. “Conversations With the Tuesday Night Girls” is a creative non-fiction, wholly based on true events and stories from 2009 to the present. It might be called a “chick book,” so if you’re a guy reading this, I dare you to read it!
But why do I write? I write because I must. I cannot imagine a day without writing. Yes, writing and painting occasionally trip over each other, but a GREAT day for me is when I have the time to do both. I have been and always will be a voracious reader, and an added benefit to being entertained is learning about voice, syntax, new words and so many other things. I have found over the years that I have a facility for writing and I have nurtured that creative pursuit for most every day of my life.
I have a short story in Story Circle Network’s 2019 and 2020 anthologies, “Real Women Write.” I’ve been published in Indiana Voice Journal, Story Circle Network Journal, and I am currently romancing Chicken Soup for the Soul.
Artist
Why I paint…
My mother was an artist…a good one. I grew up sitting at her feet in the late Fifties while she painted at her easel, mostly floral still-life paintings. I never had an interest in painting until 2005 when I awoke from a dream that I had been painting a young woman and her little brother under a huge umbrella in a rainstorm toward the end of the 19th Century.
I leaped from bed and ran to the craft store to buy three tubes of paint: black, white and orange, because that is what I used in the dream. The painting was in various shades of grey, with one spot of orange — the hat on the boy’s head. I first drew the dream onto canvas board and then painted it just as I remembered it. The following day was Sunday. I opened my mailbox for Saturday’s mail. In the stack was a Crate & Barrel catalogue, and on its cover was a field of tulips in shades of grey but for one single tulip that was orange. I took that as a sign. Thus, launched my desire to take lessons and learn the proper way to handle a brush, mix color and focus on the lights and darks of my subject. It is now 2021, seventeen years later. I have been selling my art since 2007.
But why do I paint? Paintings tell stories, and every one of my paintings, whether still life or portrait, sheds some light on history that resonates with both myself and the those who buy my work. Please feel free to look through some of my art posted here (below), and thank you for stopping by!
“Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.”
— Boris Pasternak