New Anderson Artists Guild member Ray Richards blooms wherever he’s planted. With a dad in the Navy, he attended 20 different schools before high school. “I loved it,” he said. “I liked going places, seeing new things, exploring, meeting new people.” He graduated from the University of North Carolina Charlotte with a degree in quantitative analysis and started his career at a cotton mill before signing on with Michelin, where he used analytical skills to fix complicated proce

Even before she could read, new Anderson Artists Guild member Kate Salley Palmer was drawn to the Sunday comics. “They were in full color on those giant pages, and they were just beautiful,” she said. “I could not get enough.” While earning a degree in elementary education at the University of South Carolina, she wrote a cartoon strip for the student newspaper called Terrible Tom and the Boys. Though she taught briefly and took time out to raise her children, by the mid-1970s

New Anderson Artists Guild member Cynthia Steward, who grew up in the Chicago area, completed an associate’s degree at Harper College before joining the Navy. Stationed in Pensacola for four and half years, she worked in aviation electronics. After her tour was up, her employment included sales of refrigerated equipment to hospitals, restaurants, and convenience stores. Then she returned to school, completing a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at the University of

New Anderson Artists Guild member Dawn Hayden has had a busy life raising her children. She decided many years ago to be a stay-at-home mom because her husband runs a demanding business in Anderson. But now her daughter is out of the house in a career in Greenville and her son will be a sophomore at Anderson University. Now that her children are young adults, she’s been exploring her artistic side. She’s been taking classes in Greenville for a few years, starting with drawing