Photo of Julene Painting in San Antonio Botanical Gardens Sweatshirt

Julene Franki painting at the San Antonio Botanical Gardens in late March, 2018, by her friend Stephanie Ellis Ecke. Used with permission

I am so lucky! When I was a little girl, before I even went to first grade, my mother took me to art school every week at Mrs. Jones'. Mrs. Jones was a farmers wife, but she was a trained artist. She had an art studio behind the farm house and that is where I learned to paint and draw with my lifelong best friend Clarice, who I called Ann Clarice then. I think Clarice's mom and my mom took turns taking us the "long" 15 minutes or so out to the farm once a week. I was painting in oils when I was 5 and painted, painted painted with Clarice and Mrs. Jones until I was in high school. My work of art: "Fruit, Wine and Sunshine," created when I was five, and which I won a blue ribbon for at the 1960 Jim Wells County Fair is an example of this...