"I take a walk, pretending I am a detached mind." -Czeslaw Milosz-

Nov. 30th 2009, 5 am. I turn on the lights and walk in, check the fire, stoke the fire and wander upstairs to make coffee. It is my opening day of work in the new studio that has been my ongoing project for the last three months. Everything is painted white; I have shelves, brush hangers, adjustable easels that hang from the ceiling, benches, a large 4x8 ft. work table, a drafting table and a heated, dust-free room for drying canvasses. I have light banks that I can raise and lower from ropes and pulleys suspended from the ceiling. I have a Bose sound system (Christmas gift from artist Harry Anderson) that has a wireless feed from my computer library and, after I attached wheels to the bottom of a small cabinet, I have a rolling paint palette table!

I look around, think to myself, "Now what the hell do I do?" I have had months to dream up everything I could accomplish if I had the space, time and resources and now it is all here………. No!!! I have had years to dream up large projects! I have worked outside, in tents, on kitchen tables and damp, spider-infested, basements; anywhere I could find a spot to set up an easel or table and draw. Now here it is spread out before me, my brain child. It is hard to explain the goodness I feel, the light I absorb and the hopes I have.

In seven months I will have my first one man gallery show in Brownsville, Nebraska. "Why Brownsville?" I get asked a lot. (Anything east of the Rockies doesn't really exist for most westerners until you hit New York; everything else is corn or wheat fields and generally boring.) The answer is that next to Brownsville, the Missouri River flows by in brown swirls and where a year and some months ago I beached my kayak on the shore. I got out and wondered into town with my dear friend John Johnston. We made friends, one of them being artist Harry Anderson. Harry liked the sketches I made of my kayak journey from Montana down the Mighty Mo and invited me to keep in touch with him after I finished my trip. He later offered me a gallery showing there in Brownsville, one show at the Lyceum Cafe' and Gallery and another in his own Anderson Galleries. He asked for fifty finished and framed images to be ready by July 2010. After these shows, I plan on entering juried art shows throughout the United States and working to get into permanent galleries. There is a lot to be done and my idea tank is overflowing, so much ready to burst forth that it is clogging up the gates!