I remember how as a young kid my sisters and I would lie on our backs in the grass and gaze up at the clouds passing over us.  We'd breathlessly point out to each other the awesome things we saw forming there.  Fanciful flowers, and faces with eyes that winked at us; horses, and heroes of mighty proportions; happy clowns, dreamy landscapes and beckoning seacoasts.  We laughed and exclaimed over the magical beauty we found there.  We were transported by what we saw in those clouds.  We were alive!  Life is what we make of it. 
 

Seeing beauty is the gift we use to connect to the wonder of being alive.  It's a skill worth cultivating.  Painting, and looking at paintings is like that.  The colors, the marks, the look of the paint; when they come together in that magical way, we're transported, again, to the world we love.  We get in touch with the way we like to feel about things. We all bring different background experiences to our perceptions, but in the act of making personal closure on simple harmonies we spark the enduring, pleasurable connections to a work of art. To paint well is an ongoing obsession that requires continual practice, and study, in the attempt to capture something that is always just out of reach.  I suppose that’s the attraction in doing it - as well as in seeing it.   
 

Growing up in San Antonio, in the '50's, I would often slip away on my bicycle to the Witte and McNay art museums where I first discovered the paintings of the Onderdonks, Robert Woods, Porfirio Salinas and others.  I'd buy a Coke and go sit down in the air conditioning on a bench in front of those amazing clouds, and wonder how such magical things ever came into being.  I was transported. 
 

My first collector was my third grade teacher.  She entered my "Yellow duck by the pond" (crayola on manila) in a city-wide, school art competition.  I won, and they put our picture in the San Antonio Express & News, holding my drawing.  It was my first consciousness of being somebody.  I was an artist.  I drew Davy Crockett fighting on the walls of the Alamo, Indians on the plains, Superman, Batman, football stars, and caricatures of my teachers that my friends commissioned for 10 cents.  That was back when a dime was really a dime.  Even the girls talked to me.  It was heady stuff. 
 

Making pictures has always been my passion and pursuit.  I graduated from the University of Texas College of Fine Art, and then earned a Master of Fine Art from Syracuse University.  During that time, I fell in love with the woman that made everything right.  We married, and then came children.  I turned my picture making skills into a regular income as a freelance illustrator.  I loved being an illustrator, winning awards, and raising a couple of wonderful kids, but time flew by and I forgot about the magic in the clouds.  After the kids moved on to their own homes, I found myself with time to focus on painting again.  It was magical, and I was transported.  I'm an artist. I get up in the morning to paint, and go to bed imagining what's next.

Look at my clouds!  What do you see?  I hope you'll be transported to appreciate your world again and again.