I was born in China.

My mother was studying painting in Peking, (now Beijing ) where she met and married my father, an airline pilot.

I've been surrounded by art and art materials my whole life,  My grandfather, artist Arvid Skoggard, set me up at a little canvas with a brush, oil paints and turpentine when I was three years old.

After the Chinese Revolution, we moved to New York and my father took a  job in advertising on Madison Avenue.

 I grew up in the suburbs of New York City and spent every summer at our cottage on Go Home Bay, Georgian Bay, Ontario.

I majored in studio art at Bard College, New York. Right after college I got a studio in Paris at the Cite Internationale des Arts and spent a year-and-a-half painting large, minimal abstractions.

My first solo exhibition at the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris was well received. Subsequent exhibitions at Toronto's A Space and KAA Gallery were further investigations of the sensual possibilities of minimalist painting.

I moved to a loft on West 21st Street in New York City in 1975 and began writing freelance art criticism for Art in America, the Village Voice, Canadian Forum and others. I was a staff reviewer at Artforum magazine and later, senior editor of the Print Collector's Newsletter.

I began to paint in a figurative style after receiving a portrait commission from a New York collector, and rediscovering how much fun it is.

After moving to Toronto in 1986, I worked as a newspaper editor and columnist at the Toronto Star. I self-published an anthology of my columns https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-compleat-collector/id953302443 and won national awards for my art writing.

My book on Canadian antiques Collecting the Past https://www.amazon.ca/Collecting-Past-Guide-Canadian-Antiques/dp/0409907200 was  published by Octopus in 1992.

In 2013, I moved to Midland, Ontario where I show regularly at Quest Art Gallery. In addition I have served on the boards of Huronia Players Theatre and the Midland Cultural Centre.