When I Met Milburn Porter
I was fifteen in 1968. My family lived in Moreno Valley , an agricultural community. We were a military family; my father was an officer in the air force on a combat crew flying B-52 bombers. He was on the island of Guam flying missions to bomb Vietnam , so my mother raised us during the sixties. I went to my first war moratorium at age fifteen; I was part of the peace movement, a flower child. I loved rock music and was part of the culture. I did not think I would live long enough to grow up for a number of reasons: the A-bomb, drugs, and violence, to name a few. I did not know what I wanted to be, but knew there must be more to life than the material world; there must be some kind of magic to transform the mundane world. I felt powerless, alienated from society, drifting-lost and very lonely, and hopelessly romantic.

I have been an artist from my earliest remembering. By the time I was fifteen I had tried so many mediums and yet could not find one that allowed me to express myself completely. I began to think I was not an artist after all.

My mother began taking painting classes through the officer's wives club at the home of a woman painter named Milburn Porter. She lived in an ordinary-looking ranch style home in nearby Riverside and had her studio there. My mother invited me to join her for a Monday painting class. I listened to my mother, took a chance, went and sat on the floor, which was my custom. They made room for me by letting me alone to paint whatever I wanted, I began to trust myself slowly, quietly exploring a new medium of expression: oil paint! Magic. Through the paint, I was able to make a sense of the world, a continuous thread running through my life--a visual record. When I say painting saved my life, I mean it quite literally.

Millburn Porter was the first adult woman artist I knew, a woman painter in a man's world. She changed her name to that of a man so her paintings would be considered seriously. She encouraged me to trust in my vision of the world. My first painting sale was a portrait she commissioned, a portrait of her husband. I used the money to attend summer art college classes.

Trust someone who has life experience to guide you; look beyond the immediate and the commonplace. Find one thing you have a passion for and stick with it, make magic.