What's in a name

Svensto is my paint name and aso my email name and you may wonder where that name originated. It is a long story which began in 1952. Our fourth child was born in August that year and since her oldest sibling was 4 and 1/12 years old, it suddenly dawned on me that we would have four children in college, all at the same time. We were ecstatic about having four healthy children, since we had to wait five enless years before we were successful in procreating. But the thought of college had never entered my mind before. Something had to be done to make money and to still remain as an in home mom. I struggled for an idea of how to do that. Some one had told me that I had artistic talents and that's the way I intended to go. Norman Rockwell's name hovered in my thoughts and since I had heard vely little of female illustrators I decided I would be a one name artist, so no one could punish me for being a woman. Sven is the first half of my maiden name and Sto is the first half of my married name. Voila, a mysterious foreign sounding name was just what I had searched for.

Then came the thought of how to go about becoming a famous artist. Enter An Art Class. The only possibility in our rural community was an evening highschool class taught by an Asian ex-Disney artist. I did fairly well and after a few months I was offered space to exhibit in our local movie theatre. My teacher said, 'You are not ready for that yet'. Good advice which went unheeded.

Looking back it must have been awful. One person with as bad taste as I had, commisioned me to paint a portrait of her. I charged her $25.00 and she was happy about the result. And I had $25 in my pocket which was the charge for one months worth of lessons with a very big name teacher in a nearby large city.