It was at a summer art fair that I became fascinated watching an artist sketching portraits. I was probably eight or nine years old at the time. The experience of seeing a face appear on a blank page sparked an inner glow in me that is still just as bright today as it was then. Magic ! I shall learn to do this someday.Like many before me were told, “Art doesn't count. You will starve, do something else and make a comfortable living”. I was not a good student, was dyslexic and my report card said that I did not work to my full potential. My grandmother said to me, “If you try hard enough, there is little in life that you can't do”. She also said that anything worth doing is worth doing right; which has always been my credo.After raising four sons and fulfilling the expectations of others, I moved to the North Coast Village of Mendocino to study art and portraiture. With my “golden hands”, which I was known to have had in dental school, and with my latent talent, it was thought that I could become a great portrait artist in a few short years. Listen carefully, it took me six years to learn to draw well and twenty years of practice to paint a portrait worth framing.As a charter member of the Mendocino Portrait Guild, I have done well over a thousand portraits , and still looking forward to painting my next model. It's a joy for me to transform a blank canvas into a person and hopefully someone will be pleased and intrigued seeing my Mona Lisa; enough so, that it will spark the phosphorescent glow of their inner being..Don Koubek