I remember drawing just after birth. Okay, I don’t really remember that. My earliest recall of a desire to make art was warm summer evenings in California, card table opened under the porch light, No. 2 in hand, copying pictures of Disney characters.
Dangerously close to getting drafted during Vietnam I enlisted in a 4 year course of study in maturity put on by The United States Marine Corps. At one point during that most excellent adventure the Corps sent me to a somewhat isolated posting in the State of Washington.  In my limited free time I first experienced wilderness and learned to love fishing and hunting.
When the enlistment ended I went back to California to apprentice at becoming a starving artist. After a couple years of crock-pot pintos and ham hocks I’d had enough and returned to Washington seeking a job. Having an art background of course I immediately took work in law enforcement and security!
Many years later (with not much art created in between) I reached the magic age when they will give you back the money you’ve paid in to no longer go to the office each day, so I retired.
Now my Summers consist of traveling with my love and our basenjis, painting plein air in the mornings and fly fishing in the afternoons. Then in Winter I’m hunkered down in the studio making big paintings from little studies, carving woodblocks to make prints, tying some fishing flies and day-dreaming of the warm Summer to come.