I was born and raised in Alaska (USA).  My parents came to Alaska from California to homestead near Soldotna (on the Kenai Peninsula) with my father's parents, his sister's family and with my mother's sister's family in the mid-1950s.  The four homesteads were very close to each other.  My paternal aunt, Frances Goodrich Damon, and her son, my cousin, Lawrence Damon, Jr., were killed at Whittier during the 1964 Earthquake.   My parents moved with me and my two sisters to Anchorage (in Southcentral Alaska) in time for me to start third grade.  My maternal aunt and her family followed a few years later.  I grew up in Anchorage and had started painting by 1974.  My parents and sisters moved back to Soldotna and my maternal aunt's family moved back to California while I was away at college.  I graduated from Boston (Massachusetts) University with a bachelor's degree in communications in May 1980.  My grandparents, Clarence and Anna Goodrich, who worked hard during the 1960s and 1970s to grow Soldotna into a thriving community, died while living in the Anchorage Pioneer Home during the 1980s.  My mother's parents, Joe and Sarah Mullins, also died in the late 1980s in California.  I now live in Anchorage with my husband, Jim Granata, and our lhasa-apsos, Puhn-Kin and Griz-Lee.  I'd given up my day job in communications to be a full-time painter by the end of 1996.  Since then I've enjoyed increasing success in producing, exhibiting and selling my work.