The Tiny Dancer

Watercolor - approx 15" x 20" - on Strathmore board

A blast from the past!

Another of some discovered old slides. Yup, that is me and Lamar Osborne...pickin' and grinnin'! Lamar was my friend, chili cooking partner and above all...my banker! He made it way to easy to borrow on a signature. ha. I remember when he loaned me $600 to buy a Martin D18 guitar from a musician on hard times. As a side note: You think times are tough now....they were REALLY tough back then. I had a 21% mortgage loan on my studio and house. We waited in line to buy gas at times. Inflation was rampant and Jimmy Carter was sent back to his Georgia peanut farm!

my Rocky Mountain deck.

This is the same time period as previous post. Mary and I built this entire deck by hand, one board, and one six-pack at a time! This was my getaway from the grind of cranking out the art.

Some 'found' slides of my New Mexico Studio.

Another blast from the past here. I found some great old 35mm slides of my studio, etc out in the Southern Rockies of New Mexico. And, I just bought a new Epson scanner specifically to scan slides, so thought I would test it. As for the studio pics: My friend, Albert Richardson, Ruidoso, built this studio from my designs. I must say, I probably drove as many nails as anybody. We had some help from a couple of Albert's kids and Carlie Bochardt. (and I cannot forget my good wife and kids.) As you can see, I was totally immersed in the Western life-style and collected lots of artifacts, many of which, wound up being depicted in my paintings.

My new book.

I recently published this little picture-book as Christmas gifts for my family. You can flip through a few pages by going to:
http://www.blurb.com/books/440771

Saddle on a Chair

Over the years, my paintings have been a conduit to life-experiences. This painting, done in the late 1970's, was sold to H. C. Lewis of Lubbock, thru a gallery in Santa Fe. That event began years of wonderful, intense, and even tragic, relationships with the lives of many out in the ranch country on the great plains of Texas. Maybe I'll put that in a book someday. (About the painting): approx 16"x20", acrylic on stretched canvas. The model was a warm-up saddle in a riding stable at Stroud, Oklahoma. It is now in a private collection.

more paintings

Charlie Rich, shoeing an appaloosa near Capitan, New Mexico. This painting won a Gold Medal for Watercolor at the National Western Artists Exhibit. It was published on the cover of the American Farriers Journal.