Marjorie Dakin

New York, New York

I was born in Bristol, England on December 5, 1911. With my father (a bookkeeper) and mother and two younger brothers we left for America in 1920 to join an uncle, the only one of my fathers brothers in Hollywood, California. My uncle Frank and his wife Dorothy were both associated with theatre and the studios, as actor and actress of both stage and screen. I am a high school drop out. I worked in the inking and painting department of the cartoon studios. I started with Warner Brothers and later Walt Disney. In my mid thirties I came to New York alone. (I am single). I found work in the dress shops of mid town Manhattan sewing. I also began to paint seriously in water color and oil ( an ambition since childhood to be an artist). Working alone both indoors and out was suggested by a teacher at the Art Students League on 57th Street. It was only recently I became interested in poetry. At one time in the late 1950s, I took a newspaper correspondence course hoping it might help me write essays. I received a certificate graded B. It was on my many trips in the New York area that I took notes of the scene and reasons for future reference. Perhaps that is what is surfacing now. I have been a member of the metropolitan Museum of Art for over 25 years and recently The National Museum of Women in the Art.