THE EARLY YEARS

Crayons. Lots of crayons. Numerous boxes of 64. And not just coloring with them. Organizing them. Melting them on the radiator into beautiful swirling puddles. Watching programs on Sesame Street about how crayons are made. My love of color started early and it ran deep.

 

HIGH SCHOOL ART

If it was offered, I took it. Much of my current experience as a fine artist comes from the skills I gained at Belmont Public High School. I can draw a decent self-portrait, love watercolor, but acrylic comes easier, and have half a dozen ceramic vases as pen holders. But the class that I loved the most was photography. The digital age hadn’t yet exploded, so it consisted of shooting on a Pentax K-1000 and developing under red light. Hours upon hours of focusing and filtering and exposing and burning and dodging, and trying not to inhale the stop bath.

 

ALMOST A PSYCHOLOGIST

I started off my college career as a Psychology major, Fine Art minor at St. Lawrence University in New York. That changed when I went abroad to Australia to attend James Cook University. Its intensive Bachelor of Photography program gave me my first exposure to creating and manipulating art digitally. And I was hooked. I didn’t toss psychology to the curb, however; many of these classes increased my ability to design. Sensation and Perception taught me about color-blindedness and which colors were most visible at certain times of day. Animal Behavior taught me how to create emotional and physical responses through images. And Research Methods taught me about the predictability (and unpredictability) of human nature. Every art school should require a minor in Psychology.