Jack Highberger has been a working artist for more than 50 years. Starting at Trinity College alternating focus between Pre-Med and English Literature, he found this path less enticing than his aspiration to become an artist and entered Boston University School of Fine Arts with a concentration in Studio Practice. Upon graduating Boston University in 1977, he took a studio in Peabody, MA and painted obsessively for 12 hours a day for the next 20 years straight. He began making short-form films and working for cable television to make ends meet, and the pull of art always brought him back to the studio. This pull to the studio along with people asking for lessons led to the opening of his gallery, Acorn Gallery School of Art,  in Marblehead, MA in 1995. The excellent experience and education at Boston University became the foundation of what is now taught at the studio and gallery. Alongside his wife, Debra Freeman Highberger he has been teaching for the past 30 years. Highberger finds that teaching the fundamentals over and over is also a viable method for inspiring work of his own. Essentially, painting has been his life for most of his life and it continues today.