Cheryl Petty received a BA in painting from UCLA in 1971.  Before that she lived in Long Beach, California where she graduated from Wilson High School in 1967.  "Art was a large part of my life since I was a small child," says Petty.  Few paintings exist from her early post college period.  Most were large acrylic or oil paintings of figures or urban landscapes.
Since moving to Dunsmuir, California, in 1992, Petty developed the Window Box Nursery in the Historic Downtown District.  Espaliered apple and pear, climbing, and old fashioned roses clothe and drape every view of the long and narrow brick and tin walls to either side.  The tantalizing sound of water beckons and lures one on to the private and magical hillside garden with the eternal bubbling spring happily splashing downhill, the image of the spring at the foot of the mountain.
Moving to rural Northern California opened a gateway to creativity that was blocked by myriad concerns of life in the city.  Gradually the artistic impulse seeps back into the crevices and Petty soon started doing small format work in oil, pastel and ink sketches of her surroundings and in the mountains.