When I look back on my life, I can see that art was always important to me. Before I saw letters as symbols for sounds that could create words, I saw their shapes and drew them on paper.

When I finally learned to read, things got more complicated because there were so many words, and so many rules to govern them. Pictures were more friendly for me. I could enjoy an entire book of pictures, but pages full of words were overwhelming.

I don’t know that I had an ambition for my art. I thought of becoming an art teacher. I don’t remember wanting to be an artist.. I saw myself as an artist until I went to art school. I’d been trying to copy things… attempting to render likenesses of objects on paper. I hadn’t realized that I could interpret those objects, or tell my own story through the images. This was frustrating for me and for my instructors. So many of the other students had distinctive style, not only in their work, but in their fashion and their presence. I had none of that, because I had no confidence. I didn’t have anything to say.

This seems so sad to me now, because at 23 years old, I had already had rich experiences, living on the farm and living abroad.

At Bible School, they told me everything they wanted me to know. I just had to remember it long enough to recite it back.

In Art School, they wanted me to think for myself. They wanted me to take risks. I didn’t know how.

Maybe my unrealized ambition was to do what I am doing, and continuing to learn to do now.

I like to overturn things, like putting fish in the trees, or a school of corgis beneath the waves.

I sometimes wonder how different my art school experience would be if I could go back and do it over now.

You can’t get anywhere without a journey.

Preplanning a project is more like digesting a meal. The sketch is in my head, and I generally work from that. The ideas come quietly, bubbling up waiting for me to notice them. Sometimes there is no sketch, there is just play.