A view from Inside the Drainage Pipe to the outside.
16" x 20" acyrlic original painting.
At an early age I was interested in art. I appplied to the School of Art, in Rhode Island numerous times for mail order training at age eight. I was finally taken seriously in my freshman year of high school when my art teacher, Mrs. Dorothy Barkley, took an extraordinary interest in my talent, which was very encouraging.I attended three years of summer Honors Art Scholarship classes at Murray State University and upon graduation from high school was awarded an invitational scholarship to Ringling School of Art, In Sarasots, FLA. After the scholarship funding had ended, I returned to Murray State University again.After coming back from school, I was ready to set the world on fire with my paintings of nude women and seascapes. However, Kentucky was not quite ready for my art. I entered into a four year apprenticeship in Graphic Arts and Printing industry...for twenty years. I attempted starting a framing and art gallery in the late eighties. I had produced three limited edition prints of my landscape art and was involved with The Bluegrass Artists of KY, a group that traveled within the state park system selling and exhibiting our prints. We had contracts with the gift shops to display and sell our work.Making a living in the printing business is usually about sixty to eighty hours a week, so you see the conflict right away. The frame shop failed because of lack of interest from the township, especially in those dreaded February - April months. After twenty six years in the Graphic Arts and a disabling injury, I quit the business or should I say, it outgrew my use. The computer can now do what took me hours to do in a matter of minutes.After a series of family problems, divorce, best friends suicide, grandparents and fathers deaths, I moved in with my elderly mother to assist. The family had owned a hardware business for forty years that had also closed so I remodeled a 16' x 16' section in the store building, converting it into a studio and gallery for $3,000.I have been producing my paintings for six months. One of the reasons that I quit before was that I was not ready for the general public's criticism; this time the general public doesn't have much say in the matter. I firmly believe that a God given talent wasted is one of the worst sins that anyone can commit.That alone should be enough to drive me to paint, but I truly love to paint. I hope that my paintings can open a gateway to a dialogue about global warming, the Earth, nature and our environment. I am deeply involved in these causes. Environmental awareness seems to be the first step to a solution and I find it vastly deficient. My paintings of beautiful nature scenes may open a discussion where I can improve awareness and do my part to save this wonderful planet. My Cherokee grandfather taught me the ways of the woods and Mother Nature and those teachings resound in me every day. My connection to this Earth is a religious experience for me, which will not die.
