Quiet and unassuming, Richard W. Plasschaert is a study in perseverance. He has spent the major portion of his life in the pursuit of his chosen profession.

He was born on April 25, 1941 in New Ulm, Minnesota, a peaceful little community about seventy-five miles southwest of Minneapolis. His father, Maurice, was an army career man and like all other military families, they were constantly on the move. Dick's formative years were spent in Red Bank, New Jersey, and from there to various parts of the deep south.

Dick maintains that there never was a time in his life that he wasn't interested in art. If he wasn't actually pursuing his career in art, he was thinking about it, reading about it, or sharpening his artistic skills by d...