For me, art fills a need--to play, to make something meaningful from what has been, I think, a quite ordinary life--at least externally.  My formal education was in literature and specifically in poetry (MFA). There are times that I wonder what sustains this drive to experiment, to improve my skill and the quality of what I make.  My father had no use for art, possibly because he was color blind, and he also made his living through physical labor.  He said very little, told us almost nothing about his life.  He worked in a foundry and as a farmer, and I grew up helping on the farm.  My father saw the most value in that wort of work, possibly because he had little education (he left school after the 9th grade--as did my mother). I longed for something very different.  So art (painting and writing) has been, in part, a reaction against where I was born and what was expected of me.

I am now retire, having worked in the University of California, Irvine libraries for 28 years.  It provided a living while I wrote and painted.  I might have wished for a more illustrious or noteworthy history, but we are who we are.  Private drive, passions, and abilities--those are what artists deliver best, I think.  It's what I am attempting to express, trusting that "what is most personal is the most universal."