I grew up up in San Francisco, the daughter of two talented artists, and have been drawing for as long as I can remember. My first medium was ballpoint pen, which was handy for multitasking during elementary, high school, college, and grad school classes, as my school notebooks will attest. At home, I carefully copied photographs from newspapers and textbooks.

In 1980 when I was 20 I spent a semester at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, including a wonderful class, Methods and Materials, taught by Oakland artist Jason Schoener. The class gave me the confidence and the skills to paint large photo-realistic paintings, like my mom had done back in the 1960s and 1970s.

I studied English at UC Berkeley and then went on to work in various English-adjacent jobs, and I retired from the Contra Costa County Library in 2017.

I came back to painting in 2023. It happened pretty much by chance—I was sitting at a stoplight at dusk and there was some graffiti on a wall and an electrician silhouetted on a roof and the whole scene struck me as wonderfully paint-able. So I snapped the photo, bought the biggest canvas my car would hold, dug out my old paints, and my new retirement hobby was born.

Now as I go about my day I am often on the lookout for subjects and compositions that catch my eye in that same way. Then I snap the photo and then, to the best of my ability, I paint the picture.​

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I hope you enjoy them.

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Contact: liz4w@yahoo.com