I’ve been painting professionally, continually, for a living for over 50 years, and I’ve been living in Santa Fe for 32 years, living in my dream 1912 adobe studio and gallery, in an old downtown neighborhood of Santa Fe. I got my start at the Shrine Crippled Children’s Hospital, where I had a series of polio operations as little boy, brought art supplies for the children and I made some work with those supplies. In 1956, my parents opened a storefront, a mom and pop shop, that sold art supplies and made picture frames so I was around a bunch of artist collecting their supplies. Through the sixties I was exhibiting in dozens of alternate spaces at a time: dinner theaters, beauty boutiques, bank lobbies, restaurants, outdoor art shows. It was experiential, getting a lot of feedback, building a collector base from grass roots. I’m self taught, I’ve tenaciously worked at it.