I'm an artist that creates nature art for hospitals. I took a non-traditional path to get where I am today. I enrolled in art school while I was still in high school, but I never made it. To my parents??? surprise, I decided at the last minute to pursue medicine, and worked as a family physician in Jefferson City, Missouri for 25 years. By the mid-1990s, my enduring passion for art led me to formalize my art training. I studied independently with Annette Weintraub, an art professor at City College in New York, and William Hawk, a painting professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Hawk convinced me to enter the university???s graduate art program, where I studied from 1998 to 2001 while I temporarily reduced hours at my medical practice to go back to school. Another defining fact