An Artist's Life

About the Book

I started my book with the line "I don't remember the time when I didn't want to be an artist." Yes, but there were many times when I would have liked to forget it. My mother, who was not crazy about the idea, was fond of saying, "but you could always paint on the side." However, as fate or the Gods would have it, at least something supernatural kept pushing me to that end, as if I had "ARTIST" indelibly stamped on my forehead. So this story is all about the things I had to go through to achieve a reasonable height in my fated field of endeavor. I started out by describing some of my early childhood encounters with the painting and drawing: the relatives, the adoring public, school chums, teachers, and some who don't like or approve of artists like all of the above, and some boy friends and girl friends.

I had many adventures on my way to the top, some happy, some sad, some terrible, some downright weird. My editor thinks the book is like a group of short stories, all somewhat funny. I'm not sure they were all funny, not when I was living them. I also put in some of the humorous and tragic things that happened to me along the way, but mostly I stuck to the challenges, pitfalls, and triumphs of an art career.

In the middle of my trip to the top position in the commercial art advertising field I made a detour into a fine arts promotional art position. It was an eight year sting doing mostly fine arts, an artist's dream job. Imagine being paid to do what I thought of as fun and games. This time of my life makes the book more versatile and interesting to the reader and especially to the would-be fine artist or craftsman, or the simply curious about an artist's life. In the end I got what I wanted; the top position of art director of the whole corporation.

About the Author

The author, the artist in the title, was born in the USA. She was the daughter of a very successful artist, a designer in his field, and a young, very supportive mother. Some of the author's home life and schooling, always emphasizing her art training, is the beginning of a fast-paced and often humorous story on her life as a fine and commercial artist. Her rough start, trials and tribulations, plus mistakes, all adding up to the goal she set for herself in art and an eventual happy ending.