My family lived near New York City. during the school year, and on the Massachusetts coast in the summer. Because my father was an art educator who painted in the summer months, the family moved with the seasons. In the winter there were day trips to Manhattan to visit museums and galleries, especially visiting shows of abstraction and the New York School. I responded to modern art with the directness of the child I was. DeKooning! Pollock! Nevelson! and later, Frankenthaler, Rothko, Louis, to name a few. My personal visual library was formed by this early exposure and I still rely on it, with later additions including the California Light and Space artists, Agnes Martin and Brice Marden.

In 1971 I graduated from Yale College with a major in architecture. One year of architecture school convinced me that I am not a planner. I headed to the Left Coast to be a hippie and discovered ceramics, with its transparent and unpredictable glazes. After some years of "starving artist" I took a Master's in ceramics for the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Meanwhile, I was studying Taoism, reading the TaoTe Ching and using the I Ching. I learned tai chi from Mater Ni in Santa Barbara, then various forms of chi gong. I now have a Fire Dragon Meridian daily chi gong practice that supports my health and readies me for studio work.

I have received artist grants from the California and Missouri State Arts Councils and served as a master artist for talented high school students in Santa Barbara County. My work is owned by private and corporate collections across the West, including Neiman Marcus Corporation, Gulfstream Corporation, and the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center.

After a health disaster in 2005 I found my way to watercolor paint, which is non-toxic and transparent, both necessities for me. I paint full-time in Lamy, New Mexico, where I share a house and studio with my son, Turner Mark-Jacobs, a graphic artist.