In The Beginning

While staying in a rented apartment on the Ile Saint-Louis I found myself among the art galleries of the rue de Seine. I had been a photographer for over 20 years but had been toying with the idea of “controlling my medium, ie., drawing or painting. At 14, rue de Seine I entered the Anne Julian Art Gallery devoted solely to the artist and actor Jean Cocteau. Drawings of Jean were all over the walls and in the books of the gallery. His drawings were drawing me in like a light that day. It was like an epiphany. For the first time in my life it registered with something inside me. Jean Cocteau drew people the way he saw them, not the way they actually appeared to everyone else. Wow!!! Boom!!! From that moment I would begin drawing faces and portraits my way.