As a schoolgirl, Rita Joyce of Sparta is brief to confess that her grades for art class have been much far better than for her other subjects. But raw expertise was only the starting.

“From the extremely commencing artwork was my burning passion and profession,” Joyce claimed, “but my engineer father told me straight out that I could not make a residing at artwork.”

Owning no parental help, she began doing the job following college to pay out for art courses and materials.

She grew up on a modest farm with a seven-acre walnut orchard adjacent to Roy Roger’s ranch in Encino, California. She went to university with the kids of actors who’d moved 15 miles from Hollywood to “the nation,” and she would see John Wayne and Dick Van Dyke in the grocery retail store.

She offered her first piece of art to a soap opera actress and was