The Roadside Artist

Last night I heard that another boat went down while trying to cross the Tillamook bar. It was a 50+ foot commercial fishing vessel and I guess the wave action was just too much. There were four persons aboard - one died, the others were rescued.

I went to check out the scene. The boat was gone, but someone had left a flower memorial…

The Coast Guard swimmer deserves a medal. It was an amazing rescue in dangerous waters. I used to be the Captain of a commercial boat, so I know something about how dangerous it is. I still have dreams about crossing the Tillamook bar all these years later.

Last night, I was reminded again how lucky I am to be alive.

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Published by Utah State University, The Journal of Western Literature requested publication rights for one of my works…

The Fall 2006 issue features one of my Oregon impressionist watercolor paintings. You can probably pick up a copy at your local academic bookstore (colleges/universities).

The Riddle Of Ghost Towns

A near-front article features one of my better known Oregon impressionist paintings, Ghost Town Hardman Oregon. It would have been lovelier in color, but this is an academic publication after all. And I’m proud that they chose me to illustrate this important subject.

They gave me a mini-bio at the end. It’s hard to condense everything I do into a short piece, so I found the extracted version a bit confusing. But if it brings one new person to my work, I’m more than happy.

In Your Face, Picasso!

Thanks, USU.

Utah State University, Western American Literature

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This was a show over the weekend. No, I wasn’t there drawing people - it wasn’t an art show and I wasn’t invited. Of course, I didn’t know it existed either, so there you go… I just happened to be visiting Tillamook today when some old cars caught my eye. It turns out they were having an event called Old Iron.

Old School Bus

I love old stuff. It reminds me of how temporary everything in life really is, how what is a big deal NOW will be a joke later. And then even later, it becomes an object of nostalgia.

It isn’t art… or is it? The loving care with which these machines were originally designed was an art to the designers. The restoration of these relics was an art for the persons who did it. Art is in the eye of the beholder, after all, and in a sense these are sculptures that teach us about the early 20th century. Maybe I should have been there.

The more I thought about it, the more I thought that I should have learned to build cars instead of draw people. The old cars, trucks and tractors last a lot longer and everyone understands them. But I didn’t think of things like that as art when I was younger. I guess I wasn’t smart enough. On the other hand, I like what I do so what am I agonizing over?

Well, I’m not agonizing, really. I just obsessively muse about everything I encounter. Always looking for a deeper meaning even when none exists. I still think I’m right about the old cars as art, though. But like everything else in art, it’s just an opinion.

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For those of you who weren’t there, I had a couple of paintings at the Tillamook County Fair. It was a last minute thing and I couldn’t submit my best paintings because they are all on gallery-wrapped canvas and the fair requires regular frames. They are kind of behind the times in that respect.

Anyway, I submitted two bird paintings, and they won second and third place. The higher placing painting was the California Gull, which was NOT the best of the two in my opinion. I preferred the Snowy Plover. Well, judges are an odd bunch.

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