I produce my art because I have to, the way other people breathe. I have worked since childhood. In order to express myself I must get the ideas in my head on paper or canvas. My life is my art, just as my family is my life. I feel you are influenced by others in your art and you also influence others—it is this cauldron that makes the artist. I am now 84 years of age. I have spent the last 53 years in Alaska where, regardless of other life events, I have continued to create my art. My roots are in the Abstract Expressionist movement of the 1940s and 1950s; in the 1950s I worked and studied in New York where I had the privilege of personal friendships with many artists of this movement. I have worked on paper, mutating conventional media by mixing watercolors, oil pastels and acrylics together, bringing a monoprint to underlie a painting. This is simply one way that I make my art. Others are with oil on canvas, basic acrylic on paper and watercolors on paper. I have over 1,200 finished works on paper and about twenty works in oil on canvas. A New York Times critic in 1955 noted I paint moving landscapes. As I embark on the last paintings of my life, I would like my next series to be a return to landscapes. I feel that this circle will be apparent in the future when I bow to Alaska and the happiness she has brought me.