Alice Neel was my first teacher, I was 10 years old and scared, too scared to return.

At 18, while studying acting  at NYU School of the Arts my side job was working for artists Ruth Kligman and Carlos Sansegundo. Ruth was infamous for surviving the fatal car crash of her lover, Jackson Pollock and then taking up with Willem de Kooning.

Carlos was Henry Moore’s protégé and friend of Pablo Picasso. We worked in Franz Kline’s studio in Greenwich Village.

As acting jobs became more plentiful, painting went on the back burner and wasn’t re-ignited until a bad case of the flu ground me to a halt. It was during the period of recovery that the love of painting led me back to where I started.