I cannot remember not being able to draw. From childhood I always seemed to have a pencil in my hand. Or, a book. I suspect I pledged my life to art at a very early age due to exposure to beautiful children's books, particularly the series called Book Trails. Several of those wonderful illustrations became permanent fixtures in my mind. I believe this made me the artist I became. Reading continues to be my addiction. Otherwise, I've been supremely lucky to get paid to do things that other people spend money on as hobbies.
In my teens, theatre became my art of choice. I preferred design over acting because I loved watching the audience’s reaction to my work, which an actor cannot do. I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre Design from the University of Kansas and, twenty-one years later, an MFA from the University of Oklahoma. I was a costume designer for most of those intervening years in Chicago. I have designed costumes and/or scenery professionally for hundreds of plays in Chicago, New York City, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Alabama and Texas, mostly. Along the way, I taught costuming and makeup at several universities.
Now retired from theatre, I have come full circle back to those children's books, finally getting to illustrate them myself. All those years of designing for theatre taught me to find the dramatic moment and focus on action.
I have written Clothe Your Characters in 1900-1910, the first volume of Dressing America in the 20th Century, to provide writers with the vocabulary and details of clothing in the past century. I illustrated 1900-1910 with nearly four hundred pencil drawings. I both illustrated and did the book design on The Unauthorized "Grease" Trivia Book, written by a dancer from the movie.
Although I grew up in Bartlesville, Oklahoma and consider myself an Oklahoman, I will admit to being born in Independence, Kansas. With its short and glamorous Indian Territory history, I find greater cachet in being from Oklahoma. Now I live next door to a cow pasture in Spring, Texas, with two Australian shepherds, a tabby cat—all rescues—and a husband—who rescued me.