When I was young, my mother let me paint murals on our living room walls. Now I paint images on the walls of my clay pottery that I create on a potter’s wheel. Since early childhood I’ve loved drawing and painting and may have first learned to use a brush and explore color by doing paint by number kits on the dining room table. My father bought me a small oil paint set when I was 12, and two early paintings were portraits of my dog and my grandfather. I had great art teachers in Dallas schools including artist Paul Harris and Carolyn Dodson at Samuel High School. At East Texas State University in Commerce I was lucky to work with art professors, Charles McGough and Dr. Paul Kelpe. My first teachers in clay were sculptor, Octavio Medellin and potters, Michael Obranovich and John Miller. I became a teacher of art myself in Dallas public schools in 1965 and presently teach Ceramics and Sculpture at North Lake College in Irving, Texas.

I began classes in clay in the late 60s, and I’ve since concentrated on the ceramic medium in various techniques and forms. From the beginning, my work with clay easily connected with a need to draw and paint. In 1971, I married artist, Richard Ray whose love of art also began in childhood. Today, Richard’s oil paintings include portraits, scenes of Dallas and White Rock Lake and colorful flower paintings. However he sometimes works in the pottery studio in collaboration with me, carving and painting on the forms I create. Working collaboratively in ceramics is historically common. How fun, that my partner in life can also often be my partner in art.

Drawings that move up, over and around my pottery come from my surroundings...from stories and events...and from ART and artists, especially early abstract artists of the XXc. Work with clay and glaze (clay color) offers constant challenge and allows me to blend multiple aspects of art within one work. From the first time I drew with a crayon or painted color with a brush, my life in art had begun, and my parents were fully supportive always that I follow a path of art as a lifetime pursuit and career. Supported by family and inspiring teachers, living and working with another artist, my work as an artist continues to evolve out of a lifetime of ART-doing, ART-looking and ART-teaching.

Dallas, Texas
2007