Introduction

As I mentioned in my profile, I've been doing art as long as I can remember. One of my early memories from about the age of 5 or 6 is giving a drawing lesson to a few friends of mine. Early on I determined to be an artist and everytime I saw a movie with an artist I wanted to be that person. This seemed especially exotic if the artist had a garrett in Paris. Unfortunately I grew up in a desert art-wise. None of the primary or secondary schools I went to offered any kind of dedicated art instruction and my view of the larger art world was filtered through the narrow vision of two inch wide reproductions in encyclopedias. However, my parents did encourage me in doing art and I got to use a spare bedroom as a studio.

My first year at the University of South Dakota happened to coincide with a notable experiment in art education when Francis Coehlo and an entourage of instructors, including Clayton Bailey and John Torreano, came to campus and instituted a challenge grade system. It was an exciting year, but the art department was just too radical for a conservative state and shamefully, Coehlo and crew were encouraged to move on. My regret is that I wasn't able to take more advantage of it than I did. But the experiment did seem to awake the sleepy art department out of doldrums and improved the quality of education .

But enough about my early years, maybe more on this later. For this blog I won't be doing daily paintings but will post as often as I can.