I have been drawing since I was a very little girl. (There I am - a very little girl - in the photo above, with my brother!). (Note that I am the girl, not the boy - "Jean" being a girl's name in this country; I believe that some who come to my site have thought I was a man because Jean is a man's name in other places!)

Drawing came naturally to me as far back as I can remember, and became my preferred way of expressing myself creatively, as I was always very shy.

After high school I went to work as a secretary and a statistical typist, and I was always the office "artist" -- which usually just meant drawing "political" cartoons (goings-on in the office). When my children were small, I did artwork for their schools, drawing illustrations for school bulletins, and doing other jobs that required drawing. I also designed programs for "little theater" companies, and after taking lessons from an excellent calligrapher, I began making invitations for ourselves and for friends. I even carved wooden signs in those days, with people's names on them, to put in front of their houses. I often visited art museums (I was lucky to be living in the Los Angeles area at that time, and I was also lucky that it wasn't expensive to visit the museums in those days).

When my children were young teenagers, I enrolled at Pasadena City College and majored in art; at that time, I was no longer married, and I have never remarried -- I am a person who thoroughly enjoys my own company, to tell you the truth. It's not that I don't like other people, and in fact I very much enjoy communicating with - and have a strong need to communicate with - many other people; it's just that I communicate not primarily for the purpose of being "sociable," but for the purpose of a real exchange of thoughts, ideas, outlook, suggestions, important or otherwise useful information and/or help and so forth - that is, a real, substantial "exchange" rather than superficial social contact that has no purpose other than to make social contact.

Self-Portrait - Conte Crayons
Back in those days

I then started working nights teaching English as a Second Language, then moved to another area where I enrolled at a teacher's college and took the full course required to be able to teach Spanish at the high school level; however, this is when I came to the conclusion that I had been following the wrong path for years and years, ever since I left art behind.

It was, above all I guess, an embarrassing decision to make, since I had just "wasted" several years pursuing the wrong vocation, and I was not getting any younger -- but this was my last chance to make the right choice, and so I did. I did not begin teaching high school, and in fact the idea of doing so seemed very repellent to me. Instead, I went back to art, and I had to start all over again as a "beginner" -- I began by drawing with pencil, then changed to Conte crayons, and recently I started working with pen and ink, a medium I have wanted to try for many years, and I do love it and

intend to continue with it "forever" (as well as with Conte crayons for as long as I can find them and afford them), and I fully intend to paint in oils - small paintings, I believe, though not "miniatures."

Subjects that interest me

As a person who has many interests, I find that I am intrigued by many different subjects when it comes to drawing. I have tried drawing small animals and birds, people, still-lifes, old cars (and trucks and tractors), landscapes ... I guess that about covers everything. It's hard to say what subjects I like best to draw, as sometimes I feel like drawing a person, sometimes I feel like drawing an outdoor scene, sometimes I feel like drawing an old truck, etc. -- What I draw usually depends on what grabs me and asks me to draw it.

I love "streetscapes" even more than natural landscapes although I love natural scenes, too -- I like to be in them (I like hiking, for instance, in such places), or if I draw them, I like to show a view that indicates that people have been there, or could be there - not because they're into Extreme Sports but because they were living and/or working there in the first place or had to go through, or by, or climb up, or down, that place in order to get where they were going -- or, if they happened to live nearby or be visiting there and it was convenient to climb or walk to that area - in other words, if it were a place where people belonged; in fact, what appeals to me more than nature alone is the relationship between humans and nature - how they affect each other (how they get along together; the effects they have on each other).

If you would like to read more about what I think about the subject of art, you can visit my new blog, which is called THINKING ABOUT ART.

Art that I admire most

In the art of others, I enjoy many styles, from different periods, but my favorite artist is Vincent Van Gogh, for all his pictures. I also love Rembrandt's landscape drawings, and Cezanne's "challenging" but beautiful landscapes, and the works of many other artists, from long ago to the post-impressionist period, and even some contemporary artists, especially painters. Also, and really, just as much or more than paintings, I love etchings, and drawings made with pencil and pen and ink, and block prints, from all eras, up until right now. My favorites are Rembrandt's drawings, especially his landscape drawings -- I have books of hundreds of his drawings and I love to look at them again and again.

Lately I have been very interested in some late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century Russian artists, which I will write a little more about here later.

Another source of inspiration for me is the world of editorial cartoons (which I think of as pen and ink drawings), be they social or political commentary (not looking at them as "art," I like the social commentary ones better, but as "art," both kinds are full of wonderful examples that I try to learn from); I look at editorial cartoons just about every day -- lots of them -- and I save the ones that I want to look at some more.

Also, I very much love the work of some photographers, my favorites including Walker Evans, Paul Strand, and Alfred Stieglitz.

I believe that a conscientious and serious artist has the responsibility of honing his craft continously, in order to make his work more and more effective (that is, more and more communicative to the viewer) and, at the same time, aesthetically satisfying (a thing can be aesthetically "satisfying" whether or not the subject is "pleasing" or "pretty"). But, since art is more than craft alone, the artist must also have something to say, or the most he can achieve would be wonderfully decorative or emotionally appealing results (that's not so bad, for some, of course, who have nothing unique to express).