Hi, I’m Cheryl! I live in Valley Center, CA, a suburb of sunny San Diego. I’ve been an artist for as long as I can remember—probably since I could hold a pencil. I have memories of helping my father with his engineering blueprints at age three, though I don’t think he was overly thrilled with my “assistance”!

For many years, I didn’t fully embrace my true calling. Society led me to believe pursuing art wouldn’t provide a sustainable future, and I bought into that idea. Growing up in a poor family, I didn’t think I could afford college and wasn’t encouraged otherwise. That turned out to be untrue, and looking back, I realize I should have trusted in my gift. But life goes on…

I explored many different paths until age 52. It was then I realized I had to follow my God-given gift if I was ever going to feel fulfilled in my career and my life. I decided I needed to go to college. I enrolled with a focus on art and the digital world we live in today and graduated with degree and certificates in Graphic Design, Web Design and Web Development.

In one of my art classes at Mira Costa College I helped many of my fellow students in some of their struggles as I had many more years experience than they did. It felt very natural for me to do so. My professor in this class, Art 102 (portraits) was thrilled that I was helping and asked me if I would volunteer for the following semester as an official assistant and I gladly excepted.

I graduated in college in 2017. I looked for work as a graphic designer and because of my age found it difficult to get through the door of every business I applied. It was to my benefit (through thoughtful prayer) that I didn’t because it turned out that I was offered a job in a private school in La Jolla after one of my web clients show the principle of the school some of my art work–I accepted the offer.

I taught Adobe products for Graphic Design at the private school as well as basic art skills to students ages 9-16. Then in 2018, I accepted an other offer as a Director at a private art instruction studio in San Diego to rebuild enrollments of students ages 5-17 that had currently dropped from 100 + students to 6. Initially, I taught classes. Soon, I began training my own staff of art teachers my personal teaching techniques which helped me build the studio from 6 to 170 students from 2018 until the shut down (early 2020) due to COVID 19. From there I had to learn to developed videos so we could continue and not close the doors. Within 3 months I was learning about Zoom teaching and from there a whole new .

We managed to stay alive and thriving through the time of the shutdown. Once everything begin to “come back to normal,” and we could have live students in a studio we found a new location in Carmel Mountain in San Diego County and re-opened.

Within a period of 5 months, we were back up to around 90 students and I decided to go on my own to teach from my 8 acre property in Valley Center Ca. At sixty years of age, I wanted to reach the dream on my own before retiring. I knew it would be challenging due to location but I was okay with that. Since June of 2022, I’ve been teaching in person at Rock Ranch (my new business name) as well as on Zoom. I hold camps over summer and holidays and workshops throughout the year. I also teach adult classes on request.