Peggy Clydesdale was born on March 4th, 1974 in a small community in north central Illinois that is primarily checkered with farmland and the occasional factory. Her father was a farm chemical salesman, and her mother a nurse's aid at the local old folk's home. She was the youngest of five, and the elder children assisted her in her growing imagination by telling her tales about tiny people who lived in her mother's coffee maker and by convincing her that the giant capsule shaped fuel tank in the yard was actually a bomb which could be detonated with the slightest of tapping with a stick.

Peggy always liked to paint and draw, and was encouraged by her art teachers. Unfortunately, her guidance counselors were less enthusiastic about a career in the arts. After a five minute scan through the catalogue of the local community college (while she was in line to sign up for classes), Peggy decided that the fastest way to a fat paycheck and Full Dental was the ever practical 2 year Registered Nurse program. "After all", she thought," I don't want to still be a waitress at a fried chicken restaurant when I'm 40 years old."

And so, 12 years later and with many bloody evenings in a backwoods emergency room under her belt, she took a hard look at herself in the mirror, under the harsh fluorescent hospital bulbs, her scent receptors slightly singed from antiseptic sprays and now unable to smell that hospital smell that she used to hate so much when she visited her mom at the old folk's home. Peggy thought, "I want to paint again." "After all," she reasoned, "I don't want to still be cleaning other people's puke off of my shoes when I'm 40 years old."

And so, she quit for two years and re-discovered the thing that made her feel complete way back in the day.

Today Peggy is back cleaning up other people's puke a couple of nights a week. Such is life - but, she is painting again. When she gets her odd mental pictures now, a few of them make it onto canvas or paper, and don't just fade away into nothing. Her guidance counselor was right about one thing: cleaning up puke can buy you lots of oil paints.

footnote: In January 2006 Ms. Clydesdale affiliated herself with the Stuckist art movement, which encourages the medium of paint and resists "the vacuous pretension of conceptual art". However, she admittedly enjoys the cookbooks of Nigella Lawson, who happens to be the wife of Charles Saatchi, the proverbial Joker to the Stuckist's Batman. Nigella makes a wicked good ham roasted in coca-cola, after all.