I am a self-taught artist who loves to create beautiful things. I have always drawn and painted since early childhood; in my early adult life I designed and executed crewel embroidery pieces which, to me, is a natural extension of painting. Four of my original crewel designs won prizes in the mid 1970s from second to honorable mention in the annual Chester County Needlework Show to benefit the Paoli Hospital in Paoli, PA.

In 2005 I attended a 6-week evening continuing education course in stained glass offered by Bloomsburg University. From then on, I was hooked, and I haven't stopped creating stained glass pieces. Stained glass is my passion, my contribution to the art world, and I am both energized by it and obsessed with it. I hope that my love for stained glass shows in my work.

My education and background are science-dominated and I am retired from the field of science, but I still constantly deal with the right-brain/left-brain conflict. In time, I hope that the one overcomes the other! My leisure-time interests are reading, listening to music, playing classical piano, painting, particularly with watercolors and oil, collecting colored gemstones and American Brilliant Period Cut Glass, and drying wildflowers. 

I am retired now, and much of my time is spent volunteering in prison ministry in the federal system. However, I still feel the pull back to working in stained glass. It is therapeutic and rewarding. All of my stained glass work is now commissioned pieces. If you are interested, have a design or would like a design created and executed in stained glass, I can be contacted at ljmcgarv@ptd.net.