My mentor has died :(

My mentor and art teacher Janet Church has passed. I would consider her one of the pivital and influential people (as Dr.Phil would say) in my life. I met Janet at her art studio in the third grade. She hesitated at first in taking me in as a student because I was so young but I proved to be precocious and artistic at my age. All the other students were adults. Janet was very tempermental (unlike Taro), moody, and demanding and made me cry my first day! She was a type A personality always bursting with energy, usually arriving to class with her long, white, wet hair, from doing laps at the Y pool. She rarely sat or kept quiet for more than five minutes. On occasion an artist would trigger her into a fit of rage. It wasn't uncommon to see wet brushes with paint flying across the studio. But believe it or not everyone still loved her. I learned so much from her. I remember one lesson in particular when I was painting my life size Japanese anime "Candy" doll. She had a bright frilly red dress and Janet was annoyed that I couldn't see "all the colors" in her "red" dress. She screamed can't you see the blue, purple, and green in her dress! I saw orange maybe but not green! I didn't see any rainbow. But I agreed....I wasn't in the mood to have my brushes thrown up in the air. Sadly it took me more than fifteen years to finally figure out what she was trying to teach me! My other influence was Taro Yashima, artist, activist, and Caldecott winner. Taro was a perfectionist and would draw things over 100 times sometimes until he was satisfied! He passed in 1994 and came to me in a dream handing me a red rose. I knew right away he had died and was saying good-bye to all his students. But his books still live on. And Janet lives on in all her students and art work.