During a memorable summer visit to relatives in Paris, France, in 1963, Lourie visited Man Ray at his studio and had an interesting dinner conversation with Ray and Juliet, his wife, at a Latin Quarter restaurant.

As a University of Chicago student, he included several studio art classes in his Bachelor of Arts studies and often visited the Chicago Art Institute.

Lourie worked as Poetry Editor and Editor in Chief at Chicago Review literary journal, and he pursued writing and performance art throughout the '60s and '70s. While living in Philadelphia, PA, for several years he was influenced by painters Jane Forth (trained at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts) and James Schaeffer (University of Pennsylvania).

After completing his Master of Fine Arts degree at University of Arizona (1978), where he studied with poets Richard Shelton and Peter Wild, Lourie progressed to Northern California where he still works as an editor for Gateways Books & Tapes and Retro Science Fiction imprints.

Here Lourie has volunteered for years with the Saturday Morning Children's Art Classes of the Museum of Ancient and Modern Art, specializing in teaching sumi-e brush painting/haiku writing, collage, and monoprint classes. Associated with the Grass Valley Graphics Group and the Poet's Playhouse as a poet and performance artist, Lourie resumed his painting studies with master artist E.J. Gold. He is enthusiastic about these studies, particularly the "Art as T'ai Ch'i" approach, and he has added to his artistic resume a fresh and contemporary, professional approach to Southwest landscape and surrealist painting.—May, 2002