Art is my life!  I came from the land where King Attila the Hun tried to settle down. My European homeland, Hungary, has a history spanning 2000 years.

 Budapest developed into the capital of art and civilized culture by the XIX century. My appreciation of art began at about the age of four when I started to take notice of the original paintings adorning the walls of our own home. It was those painting rather than the works on public display in museums,  that first caught my interest.  Later I visited museums, which I worshiped as ’Temples of Knowledge’.  In them, I knew I must be quiet and absorb what I saw.

 My childhood friend, Tibor Kocsak, lived next door to me.  He, like Mozart, had exceptional talent at the very young age. He later became a well known composer of musicals like  ‘Le Miserables’ and  'Oliver Twist' by the famous writer Victor Hugo.  He taught me that I must practice my art daily, just as a musicians do, and that I must attend the right schools to prepare for any profession.  Artists practice by doing studies of famous paintings, just as artist such as Picasso did, before we find our own personal and perhaps original way of expressing ourselves.  I believe, from my own experience, that we born with incredible abilities and we should have the chance to develop these abilities in the right schools.  I was born to be a portrait artist, as I was always so fascinated with people, most of the time painting eyes and faces.

 My dream came true in 1985, I came to the U.S.  I got married in California on Coronado Island, moved aboard a yacht with my new husband Steve, and set out on a honeymoon voyage that turned out to be a seven year artistic adventure on our ocean going yacht , Nisku.  We made a trip on the Intercoastal Waterway heading to Miami and the Bahamas, Caicos Island, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico , US Virgin Islands,  and St Maartin.  We sailed the Islands of the Caribbean and everywhere we went, my floating, mobile studio gave me an opportunity to immerse myself in the school of nature . I came to realize that our body and our life energy are intrinsically connected to the sea from which all life emerged.  Sailing away gave me a sense of total freedom. My artistic expression was unleashed, both in the colors I used and in the forms of people, reflecting perhaps the constant interplay between cloud and wave.

 In 1995 after hurricane Luis devastated the Caribbean Islands, my life changed again. I decided to move to another place of mighty grandeur, the Islands of Hawaii set in the vastness of the Pacific Ocean. Hawaii was known to me for its stunning seascapes and warm hearted Polynesian people.I continued my mission of practicing the art of portrait painting, which is a base of any painting  of  any subject, whether it is a landscape, still life, or animals.

 In Hawaii, I met another person who profoundly influenced me, Tere Batham,a great writer and photographer, whose adventurous sea stories and portfolio of portraits of remote South Sea islanders still living a natural life style, infused me with fresh enthusiasm. I wanted to make paintings of these extraordinary people.  Over the next fifteen years Tere and her husband sailed to nearly every country in the Pacific Ocean. Her book, “Cruising Japan to New Zealand: The Voyage of the SeaQuest” was a fabulous read. It can be obtained at www.sheridanhouse.com/catalog/newbooks/cruisingjapannew.htm.

I want to share this book with everyone.  I also spent hours engrossed in Tere’s website www.geocities.com/bathamquest.