About Me: from nurse to artist to gallery owner to color mixing wiz!

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Fun facts and one fib:

 

I'm a right-handed artist, left-handed coffee drinker, lovin' my grandkids, celebrating life with my chin-up!

 

I owned an art gallery for 25 years in downtown, Holland, Michigan. I recently retired my small-business hat, saying a heartfelt good-bye to a loyal staff of eleven. Yet, my passion to paint carries on! 

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My first career was as a registered nurse for 12 years. As a young girl, in the 1950s, I idolized my homemaker mom and became a registered nurse thinking it would prepare me for the domestic life I so much wanted.​ That’s the short version. My memoir, A Lone Birch, My Artistic Journey is the long tale.

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Enter painting. As a kid, I had hopped from one craft to another -- sewing, macrame, knitting. I wasn't captivated until I took a watercolor class in my early thirties, becoming so enthralled, I went back to college. Creating artwork has been my true destiny ever since.

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I can mix paints to match Pantone Color of the Year, no matter which year! I’ve created more than a hundred paintings for the interior designers at Studio 84 in Long Beach, California, and Business Images in Chicago, Illinois, allowing me to become a wiz with color mixing.

 

Most likely you’ll find me painting birch trees. The tree with its craggy, imperfect bark, standing tall, reminding us to do the same. Secondly, I’m hypnotized by Lake Michigan, only 5 miles away. I’ve painted it a hundreds of times, in a thousand shades of blue. Yet, don’t get me started on flowers: crimson tulips, sapphire irises, or snow-white daisies boasting sunny yellow centers. 

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During the day, I'm a high energy gal! Yet, at night, I run out of steam so you'll find me relaxing in a bubble bath with a cozy mystery book in hand. Why cozy? I’m studying amateur sleuths. My next fiction book will be a sequel to the junior fiction books I’ve written inspired by my two then-young sons true adventures. This time sharing tales of living above our art gallery in downtown Holland near Macatawa marshy mucky river and the mysterious tunnels hidden underground. Working title: "Something Fishy is Going On - A Macatawa Marsh Mystery.

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I once ate a pint of Ben & Jerry's Coffee Heath ice cream back to back.. 

  (Fib. But I've done it two days in a row, Oh my!)