Whitebear Gallery

In the beginning, I wanted to have my own website so I'd have a little art gallery page online to show and maybe sell my paintings.  My son, who is very knowledgeable about these things, is also a very busy guy so has no time to do this for me.  Me, being the very UNtechnical person that I am, can't even connect up a DVD player to the TV properly, so when trying to set up one of those "do-it-yourself websites" managed to make a complete tangled disaster of the whole thing!  Talk about exasperating! After confessing to a friend that I'd probably come close to somehow crashing that entire DIY website with my horrible mess I had created (or tried to), she suggested I start small.  "Do a blog", she said, adding that once done, I could then add a gallery page to that.

Made sense to ME!  People have told me over the years from time to time that they enjoyed my writing the few times I've either written letters to them or whenever I've related certain events to people in written form.  But I've never actually thought about, nor have I ever written a BLOG before.  So, as I sat here staring at that big, blank Blogspot page, my dilemma was, WHERE do I begin!?

Do I start when I was born in New York City in the mid 1940's?  Do I begin during my childhood years growing up in Southern California in the 1950's and 1960's?  Or how about my late teens to early 20's when I was involved in the entertainment world and the Hollywood scene?

But I ask myself, what does that all REALLY have to do with my artwork anyway?  Not really much of anything, I don't think, I answered in my head...except that sometimes when thinking back on those wild and crazy times in my life, interesting ideas DO occasionally come to me.  Ideas in small bits and pieces that I incorporate into some of my paintings from time to time.

Going back a bit to my school years, I was not really ever encouraged by my parents to pursue my artistic talents, but especially so once I got out of high school as they thought it was a dead end street.  Not a practical pursuit.  Not a REAL JOB.  Not something I could ever support myself doing.  They probably would have preferred it if I had become an accountant like they both were.  But, I'm not really a numbers kind of girl.  I've pretty much always had that right brain thing going on.

Much of the time as I was growing up and after high school, I wanted to be an actress but when all that got me were a few bit and extras parts (along with a few VERY interesting and even famous boyfriends), I moved on to dancing.  I LOVED the dancing!  I could pick up a routine in minutes when I had to.  I eventually joined a dance troupe when I was 21 and went to Japan for four months just to GET OUT OF HOLLYWOOD!  That was a wonderful experience and I did meet some REALLY interesting people when I was over there.

After returning to the States and deciding to live for a while in Hawaii, certain things that happened after that, changed my life forever and I ended up going a whole other route than the entertainment business!

That route also ended up taking me AWAY from my artwork for many years.  I married, had my son when I was 29 years old, was divorced by the time he was 2, was working for my city's electric company in their keypunch department by day and going to school and studying at night.  I became a paralegal in hopes that I'd be able to get grandfathered in by taking and passing the Texas Bar once I was a certified paralegal.  However, that was never meant to be either.  No sooner had I become certified and began studying for the Bar than good ol' TX changed all that and slammed that door shut.  I remained a paralegal.  No practicing law for ME!

Law and paralegalism eventually led me to start up my own transcription service which eventually led me to specializing in medical transcription.  THAT was interesting!  Loved it!  I was good at it and I could sit there and just become lost in the transcription while the other part of my brain floated away to some fantastic imaginary places!  For me, it was a very relaxing business since I COULD "escape" periodically during my long work days cranking out all those thousands of lines of medical transcription.

That medical transcription service I owned finally led me to my next husband, a doctor.  He changed my life very much for the better!  After years of working, studying, struggling to make a good life for me and my son, I finally was able to relax a bit and be relieved of the constant lone responsibility of taking care of myself and my son BY myself.

David was my knight in shining armor.  My Prince Charming!  He was intrigued that my great grandfather had been a painter and had taught me how to paint when I was young.  He had seen some of my drawings and doodles and was appalled that I had never been able to do anything to further that talent.  But, as I told him, what are you going to do when you're a single working mother!  You fight the good fight, take care of business and your child and time....well, time just sort of drifts on by.  Before you know it, your son is a teenager, is becoming very independent and is in high school.....

Well, that magical portion of my life lasted for approximately 14 years during which time I was actually able to paint again, take art classes, have an art studio where I could really CREATE!!

Usually those stories go..."And they lived happily ever after..."

My story didn't, however.  Thanks to the Prince's midlife crisis after an open heart surgery to replace a defective mitral valve and his consequent desire to get a divorce so he could be free to pursue...shall we say...a much DIFFERENT, YOUNGER type of lifestyle, I was on my own again!  Never saw THAT coming to be perfectly honest!  But, here I am...on my own...again...but this time, I am STILL PAINTING!!

Yes, I'm still painting, thanks to a nifty thing they call ALIMONY, I am able to support myself (for now) with that and spend LOTS of time painting and creating!!  Now I'm hoping that maybe, just maybe, I can finally manage to make a business out of my artwork!  Other people do it, so I figure...why couldn't I!

Well friends, this has been the start of my blog but I'm sure I'll be adding much more in the upcoming days/weeks/months!  I personally could never imagine that my life really would be all that interesting for people to read about, but as a friend told me...YOU NEVER KNOW!  Who knows!  Maybe my story can inspire someone else to pursue THEIR artwork and their dreams, if nothing else!

Not to worry, though! This triple Leo is not ONLY going to talk about ME,  I do plan on blogging about art here as well!  I just decided to open this with a bit of my background story, in a nutshell, so to speak, to give you an idea of just who I am and how I arrived at this point in my life!

Until next time....!