Artist Bio
I am a retired professor from Howard University, where I taught undergraduate and MFA students filmmaking. My undergraduate degree is in Advertising and Design from the University of Cincinnati. I wanted to be a fine arts painter, but as an African American, I faced radical racial discrimination and felt advertising was a more promising career.
After UC, I taught art at Paul Lawrence Dunbar High School in Dayton, Ohio--my hometown. Dunbar is an underserved all-black school where students knew very little about the power of art and the careers it offers. I enjoyed showing the students how art could change their lives. Perhaps I was too good at my job--during school desegregation, the Dayton school board ordered me to leave Dunbar and move to an all-white school. When I refused, the board fired me.
Drawing is fun and rewarding--learning proportions, perspective, form, texture, and the mysteries that light and shadow play in how we see the world.