There's always an important person who helps support your interests and encourages you.

I graduated in June 1948 and then went in the fall to the art school. I stayed with my cousins on Seventeenth Street in the beginning, and later had my own apartment very near there and was able to walk to the Art Institute on Elmwood Avenue. The school had a faculty of local artists - Jeanette and Robert Blair, James Vullo who were well known in the area. It was a school that I think thrived on returning GIs, as many schools did at that time. It was a very informal program - but it was professional.

Even today, the bigger the city, the better. That's why I live in New York.

The environment itself was culturally a vacuum, in that there was simply nothing that would inspire me in the arts. But my parents were always very supportive of anything that I explored or wanted to do.

I think I was really naïve. I had no context to think about what I wanted to do. Each step was a next stage of exploration.

Upon graduation, in the yearbook I was voted "Most likely to succeed." which I know was credited to my artistic achievements.

I've always been a keen cyclist, I'm very close to the world of cycling. Not just cycling really - also walking, adventures, being a curious person, traveling to new countries.