I was a photographer long before I became an artist -- partly because someone gave me a Brownie Reflex when I was seven years old, partly because when I was nearing eight I saw another third grader's painting that was so good, I decided on the spot I'd never be an artist. Even though I earned my living as a writer-photographer for a number of years, I sometimes felt I was doing it because I could not draw.

I took my first drawing class in January 2011 at age 70 and fell in love with art, amazed that I could make anything look remotely like what it really is. Nine months later, I enrolled in the Botanical Art and Illustration program at the NC Botanical Garden.

I joined Flickr while taking my second drawing class, in order to participate in Every Day in May and be pushed to actually finish something. Daily. (There was never enough time in class, and I didn't know how to finish on my own.)

It's been wonderful to have the support of the amazing Flickr friends I started making back then, and stretch and grow. I've gotten less self-conscious about my photography as well, and am beginning to see it again as art, and as a part of me I cannot let go of, as well as an adjunct to art-making through drawing and painting.

I’m drawn to shape, texture, light and shadow, sometimes color, or a flash of the unexpected. Things that are hidden. Things that tell a story.

This is, I think, what I’ve tried to capture all my life -- whether in words, photographs, or now, drawings and paintings. I’d like to share the discoveries -- and the questions, the sense of wonder and amazement: that stunned moment when everything stops, and I’m left holding my breath and feeling I might explode for the joy of it, the beauty of it, the surprise of it.