Growing up during the Vietnam War in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, I was praised for my artistic ability. But my parents, depression/WWII survivors, warned me not to depend on it for a living. In those days journalism, my second choice, was a respectable profession, and I threw myself into it hard while still learning to paint on the side.
My family provided no college money. A Michigan Higher Ed scholarship allowed me to start. Editing my two-year college paper got me a salary and won me the 1967 University of Michigan Brumm Journalism Scholarship. Even so, it was self-taught commercial art that paid most of the bills.
A four-year hitch in the US Coast Guard convinced me to actually go for it in art. But at U-M’s art school, the GI Bill wasn't enough to finish my BFA.
I plunged into commercial art at the bottom, planning to go back to fine art “someday.” Soon I was doing design, illustration and large-format photography for serious automotive clients. By the mid-eighties I was Creative Director of a small Ann Arbor ad firm. But after the 1987 economic bust, I had to freelance right through the nineties. In the new millennium, part-time in-house gigs kept me going up to to 2012.
When that ended, I felt it was finally time to test my fine-art wings. Painting nearly full-time, I got juried into art fairs and competitions in five states. That was an education. I learned that I’m not an “art-fair artist.” 
I still live, work and paint now and then in Ann Arbor.