I was born Alice McKnight, in 1935, on a farm near Uxbridge, Ontario, where I swam in a creek, skated on ponds, rode calves and slid in the hay. I went to a one-room school, spent three years at a country high school and a year as a special non-academic art student in a four-year, art-and-academic course at Danforth Technical High School, Toronto. I apprenticed as a paste-up artist in a large commercial art studio, became a lettering artist and, eventually, a graphic designer. Everything was done by hand, it was great fun, and I learned skills and shortcuts that I use today in watercolour painting. I married a skier-sailor, Stan Cowan. Our sons, Crispin and James, dogs, cats and kittens, snakes and turtles, enriched our lives. We built a ski cabin and finished a raw 28’ sailboat. I saw the north shore of Georgian Bay, with green, green moss on the untouched forest floor of a Crown-land island. I began to paint in 1981, and, in 1989, we moved to The Town of the Blue Mountains on the shores of Georgian Bay.