I am a self-taught artist who has been painting for almost as long as I can remember. My initial interest developed during a long illness as a child, when my art-student babysitters tutored me in drawing as a means of distraction. I became serious about my art in high school, and painted in oils at that time. I began experimenting with acrylics in my twenties, and switched exclusively to acrylics in my thirties because they allowed greater flexibility to manage the time constraints of painting with a career in engineering and scientific software development. Upon retirement in 2012, I focused full time on art once again.