During most of my childhood (pre-school days), drawing was almost a daily habit of mine. My parents encouraged me, and kept a steady supply of manila paper and pencils in the house; but drawing on both sides was the rule. I distinguished myself, in the family at least, as the artist, the boy who drew. I believed I was entertaining my younger brother Dean, who was barely old enough to sit up, with the serial adventures of "Jack Shoot," my own invented comic strip character. I was such a devotee of the funny pages that I remember asking our paperboy, who was, to me, the embodiment of these printed wonders, if he actually knew the man who drew 'Hairbreadth Harry' and of course, he assured this five year old that he saw him every day!

My first art “instruction” was in the first or second grade. There, I learned to despise the use of watercolors simply because of the primitive materials and formulaic method that was required. A blunt camelhair brush, cakes of primary colors in a mixing pan, and dull manila paper, plus a mechanical formula, created confusion, not a painting. This would be my first taste of “negative education," where the teaching method discourages further interest. As children, we are all victims of our parents' and teachers' biases and prejudices. This is how we learn to make our choices; this is good and that is bad! A child is lucky not to be influenced by ignorance.

In 1926 the St. Paul School of Art started a Saturday morning class for children of grade school age. One of the instructors was Richard McKenney, an art teacher at Humboldt High School and a friend of my father. He was also my teacher in high school, and a great influence on my choices of art schools.

I was in my teens during the Great Depression and the years of FDR's New Deal. The Works Progress Administration (WPA) made art classes available to all. So with my friend and fellow artist Almon Olsen I enrolled in a weekly WPA life drawing class; one of the evening classes available in the castle called the Federal Building downtown by Rice Park. I can't honestly say I was taught anything, the teachers were unemployed artists, not necessarily teachers. But I learned what a nude looked like in variety; these were not experienced models, just men and women who were unemployed and needed the money.

My juvenile presence there was the subject of a heated debate one evening. The school manager's office was next to the classroom so the argument was too plainly heard. An older woman was in there objecting to my being exposed to the sight of a naked woman, "at his age"! The manager, a rough type of character, told her, "That kid has more business to be in there than any of the rest of the *******!! There were a lot of adult voyeurs who really weren't interested in drawing.