My Art Odyssey:

       As a child, I had three goals in life: I wanted to be a teacher, get married and have a child. Checkmark! Now I enjoy grandchildren and have added art pursuits.

      I grew up in the Southwest, the Bible Belt, granddaughter of a minister, in a town where Georgia O’Keefe was at one time head of the art department. After graduating from Baylor where I majored in English and history and minored in philosophy, I took a scholarship to the University of NC where I majored in history, published and minored in education for an M Ed degree.

        After graduation and newly wed, I taught English and history to seventh graders in New Haven CT and sponsored the dramatics club. I took up painting to fill the walls of our apartment and had my first show at the New Haven Public Library. My painting Texas Panhandle was juried into a show at the John Slade Ely House. I followed this with a pastel portrait class, and I sold oil paintings off my walls.

        Never interested in being an artist, I found art to be more interesting after a visit to a pop art show in lower Manhattan. I liked the humor and intellectual twists. Since then I have studied art, but I stayed home to raise the children after they arrived. I took my infant to view Kandinsky and Van Gogh in the Yale Art Gallery. In South Hadley, I participated in art shows and took up etching and engraving. In Dallas, more printmaking. Always, art history!

         Back in New England, I taught crafts in summer school and to neighborhood children. I was asked to be the craft expert on ABC, Boston’s Good Day! show, performing about 50 segments. I also appeared on Woman ’79. Our family was written up in the Boston Globe magazine and Better Homes and Gardens doing crafts. I did more crafts for BH &G and Ladies Home Journal and won a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship for crafts people to learn business skills.

          When we lived in London for three years, I took a diploma in Modern Art Studies. Visits all over England and the continent centered mostly on art museums. On return to Boston, after Russia, I joined the Ladies Committee (am now a Senior Associate) at the MFA where I was a guide. On my 50th birthday, I attended the SMFA for 3 years. I got in every juried art show while there.

           I joined art organizations and appeared in numerous art shows, on occasion winning Best of Show or Juror’s Choice. My biggest show, Recombinant Imagery, was in 1996 in Cambridge. I sold a number of paintings, all of which I miss. My son bought Vanity in Aspic and encouraged me to get into computers. Because of his generosity, I got a PowerMac, taught myself computing, Photoshop for graphics, QuarkXPress to make newspapers, movies and DVDs. On my 60th, I took up encaustic painting and on my 70th I created my blog DrawingTime!

           New crafts to me are like mountains to a climber. I want to try them and the teacher in me likes to share what I have learned, from beading to quilting and computing to painting. I was told a blog can encourage one to produce; it is fun to leave a footprint. Blogging is addictive and the communities of artists and followers are inspiring. Maybe this history will make more sense of my paintings as you explore my website and my blog with its frenetic variety.

           Scroll high to the top of this page to Click on Self-Portraits, Narratives, other Portraits, Journal Quilts, and Movie.  Return  or scroll down here to visit my blog at this address!  http://lindadrawingtime.blogspot.com/   LCH