My mother is a storyteller extraordinaire and a very fine painter. I was speechless during the early years, leaving her thinking I might be short on wits and talent... In fact, our entire clan was telling stories, rolling around laughing and eating endlessly. Looking back now, it occurs to me that I was hopelessly agog and merely staring. It was a good start.

My father told me when I was nineteen that no one in the United States would ever understand me or my work and that I should consider living in Mexico. I did consider it but stayed on, never dreaming he could have known anything. As it turns out, being understood in the art world hasn't mattered enormously.

What he failed to predict was that some of my paintings would genuinely frighten my clients. Occasionally one will shudder and in a tremulous voice ask, "Is my painting going to look like your work?", and I reassure them that it certainly will not.

And so, the painting version of storytelling as told with these hands and renegade eyes is my abiding passion and can't be forestalled. As my mother so often says when referring to me, "Well, there's just nothing to do about it."