WOW, first one!

[Debra Jones]

Hello, I guess I am the first one in here.

My name is Debra Jones. I found this site from my old online forum, WetCanvas.com. I call myself a born again artist. Not that I got religion, but that I took about 20 years off and am finally picking up where I should have been, a bit late.

I did a stint of commercial - which translated to me as NO - art. It may sound funny, but it was a self-esteem issue. I never finished art school so I always felt like I was faking it. Finally I just gave up. Not an abnormal response to the pressures of the career.

So now I am FIFTY (as the girl on Saturday Night Live says) and experiencing a power surge. In 2000 I found the Scottsdale Artist's School open studio. They have portrait and life drawing 3 hour sessions. I have attended religiously (there I go again) two, three or four times a week since I found them. I have only attended three instructed classes but have set my own goals and basically relearned what they taught me in school. I received a good education at the Rocky Mountain School of Art (I hear it is a college now) but when I was learning it, I didn't understand.

Age is a wonderful thing.

Confidence in my ability to learn has allowed me the luxury of wisdom. I understand and speak in the language of art that I was tutored in those years ago.

Now that many here are retiring early, I am seriously embarking on my life's work. I have the gift of patience and a serenity I could never have known THEN.

"People are my species" as Maude said to Harold. I love them. I studied anthro and archaeology. I just revel in the fact that I am one of these amazing human beings! THAT is what I see in every set of eyeballs I set down in paint, charcoal or pastel.

THIS is the most fun I have had in my life. So, that said, here I am, a couple of years ago, a "here's lookin' at you kid."