There are certain memories where, when looking back, we realize that an important decision was being formed.  One of those memories was when I knew with absolute certainty that I would spend a lifetime making art.

I was seven years old, the oldest of four children born within a five year period to very young and uneducated parents.  The six of us were attending a family party at an aunt’s house.  I didn’t like family parties but I knew this was the one home where there would be books and magazines to read.

I remember walking into the dark living room and seeing the biggest book I’d ever encountered, lying on a shiny coffee table.  I read the words ‘Art History’ and disappeared into the glossy pages.  It was a reproduction of Henri Rousseau’s ‘Sleeping Gypsy’ where this ‘knowing’ appeared.  I was transfixed by the image of a woman lying on the ground with a lion staring down at her sleeping face under a dark moonlit night.  As I sat with this painting (which I am still transfixed by more than half a century later) I suddenly knew, with unquestioned certainty, that making paintings would be a focus of my life.

The tumultuous and nomadic family life I was born into continued through most of my adulthood.  Making art has been the one constant throughout the journey and an excellent, though often challenging and demanding, traveling companion.

“The work reveals itself as you go. It tells you what it wants to be.”

Rick Rubin