My father gave me his oil paints and an old piece of wood and told me to paint something on it when I was about 12 years old. I couldn't hope to rival his wonderful landscapes, but I completed a portrait of my beloved cat. My father approved. I'd always drawn, but this gave me the encouragement that still remains until today, to continuously experiment with new materials and processes. Since moving from England to Canada in the late 60's, I've taken many courses at the Visual Art Centre, Saidye Bronfman Centre, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and the studios of Jacques Clement and Ming Ma, in drawing, watercolor, oil sticks, oil and dry pastels, acrylics, collage, mixed media, and print-making. I often include in my work all kinds of found objects from my travels, bits of flora and fauna and ephemera that are beautiful to me, and connect with my personal history. So using mixed media with acrylic paint is sometimes an appropriate way to work my way through a feeling that life is made on shifting sands, that it's a constant task of trying to hold together the unpredictable and random things that happen. This unpredictability can be a challenge, but an opportunity to bring some kind of order to the chaos on my canvas. But in the process I enjoy concentrating on texture, color, and shape and integrating representation with abstract elements.

I've exhibited my work in many group shows: including at the Visual Voice Gallery, Warren Flowers Gallery, Shaar Hashomayim, Maison de la Culture NDG, E.K. Voland Gallery (juried group and duo shows), juried duo show at the Gallery at Victoria Hall. Solo shows at Cafe Aunja and Cafe Magpie.

Art has always been an important part of my life. But I completed an Honors B.A. and M.A. in English Literature and writing has been a big part of my life too. While I taught English literature and journalism at Dawson College for 37 years, among other things I also free-lanced as a features and travel writer for newspapers and magazines, and wrote film adaptations for Harlequin Romances.