My parents were more like grandparents to me. My mom was forty and my dad was in his late forties when they had me. I have a younger brother and two older sisters. By the end the day after the long hours in the scrap yard, my dad needed to relax and my mom wanted to finish the dishes and  go to bed. After having two kids of my own I can understand that!  No time for flash cards when there was to much work to be done. 

My earliest memory of drawing was when I realized I could get a likeness of people. I drew a lot  but never kept any drawings back then. I had lots of time to doodle because I didn't have homework like my siblings. It's interesting how that may have worked to my  advantage as an artist but not academically. In elementary school I was influenced by Basil Wolvertons' ugly drawings on bubble gum cards I bought at dime stores. We especially enjoyed the ones with our friends names on them - always good for a laugh! I did a whole binder of ugly drawings that I wished I'd kept.

Basil Wolverton gum cards below!!

Ever have those days when you want to beat your self up?!

High school art classes were a bit of a let down for me, unchallenging for the most part.  We did a lot of drip painting with no  context or history of Jackson Pollock - just drip drip and do your own thing, we wasted a lot of paint! Although there was  one teacher that came and went after a year, she taught us about Vincent Van Gogh by the students acting out the role. That teacher gave me the challenge I needed, to bad she left. After that we were back to doing crafty stuff, in a touchy feeley way.

When Alex was born, there were complications. He developed  neumothorax (my spell checker can't spell it either) it's what scuba divers and deep sea divers sometimes get. We couldn't pick him up for the week he was in the incubator, which was difficult. I to was in one of those things for two weeks when I was born prematurely, the last day of the year in 1954. Ken was born in January, so,  who do you think would have an advantage in school?