The Long Beach Rugged and Desolate Painting

All my life I have been an artist. On my 8th birthday my Mom and Dad gave me a very used Schwin bike, told me that I could paint it any color I wanted and I painted it bright purple. Drew and water colored Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck a zillion times. When I was 15 I got a seriously beat up, rusty, very hot, Hot Rod and painted it bright yellow. I won awards, national awards for my art work and one of my pieces traveled all over Europe. I seriously studied painting, drawing, sculpture, jewelry design, ceramics, two and three dimensional design at the university, always wanted to be an artist. Got married had a family and needed to get a job – like for rea, steadyl money – so I did that. Forty five years later I started painting again - seriously. Had my first ever “art show” in 2001 and mind blowingly 350 people showed up, took a lot of paintings home with them and I have been painting ever since. An old friend of mine who had collected some of my work bought a little airline in Costa Rica – at one of my early art shows he asked me to come to Costa Rica and be the “Alexander Calder” for his airline, so I did that also – designing the paint schemes for eight aircraft and commuting to Costa Rica in the process. I tend not to think in terms of the classic CRBW (Consistent Recognizable Body of Work)but rather paint/photograph/sculpt/draw what I see or think I see. Painting makes me happy, that and great music – both nourish my soul. My goal is to paint as long as I possibly can, until I can’t. It really is a way say “I was here”.