I have loved drawing, creating, making all kinds of things, and painting in various mediums since elementary school. While in Junior High and High School I managed to take every art class that was offered. I took tests to get music class requirements waived just so I could fit in additional art classes. I took lettering classes, drawing, oil painting, display art, commercial art, stage design, and pottery classes and loved them all. At the University of Utah I continued to study art and learned to love watercolor and pen and ink as well.

In 1977 at the suggestion of my Mother in Law (which included her offer to tend my new baby), I signed up for a Tole Painting class. She had a friend whose granddaughter, Terrie Sharp, was teaching classes in her home studio. I had never heard of Tole Painting but since I had oil paints and brushes I signed up for the class. I picked the strokes up very easily because in the lettering classes I had taken we used brushes as well as pens. I still have the first piece I painted and it will eventually be on the website. I continued with Terrie for a little while and then just painted on my own. A friend asked me to paint on a mirror frame for her mother for Christmas that year and in January of 1978 the friend's mom asked me if I would teach her how to paint. She found a group of ladies who wanted to learn and we painted at her house. At the time I had no idea that I would continue teaching classes through having 4 children and now a first grandchild. I soon started a second group who met in my in-laws basement family room. We built a house in 1980 and I began teaching there. One of my students told me that a painting shop had opened just a few blocks away. We went over and they were Tole painting with acrylics! They had several projects so I signed up for one I liked. The first day I told the teacher, Michele Walton, that I had never painted with acrylics and she was a little worried but everything went fine. She was a great teacher and to this day I continue to take a class from her now and then. Soon after that I became acquainted with Annette Emery and moved my students over to her shop and started teaching there with acrylics. I taught many years at the Midvale Utah Craft Store. After they closed I continued teaching seminars in various shops and also for SDP Chapters. In 1995 I served as president of the Utah Guild of Heritage Artists. For the past seven of eight years I have been teaching for Roberts Arts and Crafts in Sandy, Utah and also teach at my home studio. I have enjoyed teaching drawing, watercolor, color theory, and especially decorative art classes. Over the years I have continued to take classes and have painted with many artists and great teachers from across the country, learning many mediums, techniques and styles. Over the years I have studied extensively with David Jansen, MDA, learning invaluable information about color theory, historical painting styles and techniques and how to accomplish those techniques with the high quality paints available today. His love and enthusiasm for the decorative arts is very motivating and contagious! If you haven't painted with the Jansen Art Traditions paint, please be prepared to be converted.