I grew up in Chalfont. My father was the proprietor of Bartleson’s General Store which was where the Manhattan Bagel is now located. I’ve lived in Lahaska for over 30 years. I didn’t start painting until 1999 when I was 48. My husband died in 1998, so I decided to take a year off from teaching; I took piano lessons, started to paint, and with my two kids, who were 7 and 11 at the time, traveled extensively. Most of my early paintings were of places we had visited on our trips. As we reinvented ourselves to being a family of three, I was reinventing myself as well
I am basically self-taught, having had no formal training, and I find that the more I paint, the more I discover about what I can do. I started in oils, now work primarily with acrylic, and occasionally play with watercolors.
I was lucky to discover what I wanted to do for the second half of my life!
