Alan Sippel was a Methodist Minister and lifelong artist. "I grew up in a home where there were always artists present. My mother was an art teacher as well as a practicing artist. Art theory and history came as early as nursery rhymes. I can remember my younger brother sitting in his high chair with a mound of "real" clay before him on the tray and the injunction to create. As children, we were never excluded from adult conservations about line and color and composition. As a family, many of the high holy days of the church were spent in front of appropriate works of art at the Cincinnati Art Museum. At Christmas, we would discuss a Giotto nativity. On Good Friday, we would mediate on an El Greco crucifixion. Art was the language of my childhood and youth. In college and graduate school, I minored in fine arts. And I always felt fortunate to have encountered Vickers and Haycock at Ohio Wesleyan University. But my professional life limited my time for drawing painting. Once retired, I explored that language again. Sometimes, the vocabulary and syntax come back slowly. But trust that sometimes the language of childhood comes back and there is communication once again."
