Biography: Part 2
TI AMO (lifesize)
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LOVE"S DIVINE (lifesize) |
During this time we discovered the quaint and picturesque
town of Leavenworth. I then switched from drawing the portraits of people
to the portraits of log cabins, bears, eagles and deer. When the apple season
was over and the harvest complete, it was starting to get very cold living
in the car. We had learned that if we stayed in Washington we could start
pruning the trees at the end of winter and then thin them in spring and then
it would be summer and the harvest would begin again. One day we were driving
through the Cascadian town we loved and saw an old farmhouse that sat on
twenty-one acres of land. There was a sign in the window that said 'Recording
Studio'. Since Carl played guitar and piano and we both loved music we were
intrigued. A local neighbor who was feeding his pigs told us the man who
owned the house was a surgeon who lived in Yakima. He had just bought the
house and no one was living there. That evening we were in town trying to
escape the 'fall night freezing', we drank a bottle of wine from the local
wine cellar. We got just brave enough and just drunk enough to call this
Doctor and tell him our story. You know we're artist turned migrant worker
and we'll be willing to house sit and by the way I will do a nice portrait
of your wife, your kids or your house. He was very kind, he liked that we
were freezing starving artist and he said we could live there the winter
as long as we would feed the horses he was bringing up to the farm in a couple
of weeks. He told us to meet him there in two weeks at which time he would
give us the keys and we could move in. We were ecstatic! So to summarize
Washington. beautiful, artistic, breathtaking and memorable.
We moved in that winter where from October until February
I was able to draw and paint and make sculpture out of found wood. I did
my first show that winter at a local Bakery. It was a series of pen and ink
drawings of people and animals. I sold my first piece there, it was a bear.
For three years I spent the winters drawing and painting and sculpting and
then we would leave for the summers to follow the fruit. During that time
I sketched up in the trees, down in the grass, in streams, in my V.W. van.
That's all I remember about myself during those years, sketchpad, pencils
and a knife to sharpen them. In the fall I took to riding my bike to remote
places where I would sketch the old log cabins and farmhouses. I would then
knock on their doors asking for a dollar or two in exchange for the drawing.
Riding back through town with my day's wage I would stop and pick up a fresh
loaf of bread from the incredible local bakery and a bottle of cabernet and
some cheese. Back home Carl and I would drink our wine and eat our dinner
discussing the philosophy of Carlos Castaneda, the poetry of Allen Ginsberg
and the politics of Jimmy Carter. After a few years of mountain living we
decided we were cold. One winter's day I said to Carl "I wonder what it's
like to live in Hawaii" he said, "I don't know why don't we move there and
find out. So we did. We sold our faithful 68 Red and White van and moved
to the Kona Coast. I had heard about a man who had worked as a special effects
technician for Disney. He had moved to Kona and started a graphics studio.
My goal was to interview with him and try to get a job as one of his assistants.
He was an incredible artist with a range of talent from painting surreal
fantasy subjects in the style of Frazetta, to sculpting other world creatures
in various mediums. He also did some of the most intricate pointiism in pen
and ink that I have ever seen.
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