Michael Steirnagle has been both a teacher of art and an illustrator. He served as an associate professor at Palomar College in San Marcos, California, a professional illustrator from 1975 to 1993 and an art director from 1972 to 1976. He illustrated the book, Billy Lazroe and the King of the Sea (1997), and the book, All By Herself (1999), both published by Harcourt Brace Children’s Books.“I paint people, color, abstract shapes and light. People are initially drawn to a work of art by its shapes, values and colors—not by the subject matter which secondary. My hope is that the viewer will find pleasure in the arrangement of shapes, colors and textures of the painting as well as in its subject which emerges, disappears and re-emerges throughout the work.”