Nwparker.com
Title
Nancy
Contact
- DN4ever
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- Canterbury NSW
- Australia 2193
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- +61.432536773
Description
Biographical Information
I knew from the time I was in kindergarten that I would be an artist when I grew up. Between that early thought and today's reality, many worlds have been explored. In addition to the local school curriculum, I was given lessons in dance, horseback riding, tennis, swimming and acting, and I had ten years of piano lessons. But what I really wanted were lessons in art. My mother said that all artists were buried in the potter's field, and that was the end of that. From time to time, however, I was allowed to draw to my heart's content on shelf paper. There was plenty of it when spring cleaning required the changing of the paper in all the bureau drawers and kitchen cabinets. Circular stains from cold-cream jars, fly specks, and crinkly water marks were all worked into the background of drawings from my "shelf paper period". Early reading was almost exclusively from National Geographic, The New York Sun, and Big Little Books. Ours was not a literary family. Other future authors might be reading classics by the fire, but I was swimming, sailing, tree climbing, playing "cops and robbers", "cowboys and Indians", games and cards, and listening to radio programs.
I went to Mills College in California - the oldest women's college west of the Rocky Mountains, founded in 1852. The buildings were Spanish style, the trees eucalyptus and palm, and the weather balmy. After New Jersey winters of slush, sleet, bare trees, radiators, and galoshes, Mills College seemed like paradise. In fact, it looked just like one of the pictures in National Geographic. I graduated as an art major. I also took lots of credits in English and told the creative-writing teacher that I wanted to write and illustrate children's books.
Back in New York City, and for twenty years, I slaved in the giant corporations of America. There is no aspect of publicity, sales promotion, or public relations that I do not know and understand. One day I said good-bye forever to filing cabinets, time clocks, desks, red tape, company politics, and windowless rooms, and I entered the world of children's books as an author and illustrator.
