Beginnings

Touch of Gold

As a plein air painter I paint the old fashioned way as did Frederick Church and Asher Durand, who hiked into woods and across fields carrying their precious paints and brushes. I like to think I have their nineteenth century spirit and am as tough as they were, but truth is, I'm a fair weather outdoor painter; with the first blast of arctic air in November, I head to a warm studio, hot coffee in hand.

My studio is housed in a great old dairy barn that came complete with a family of raccoons, ten thousand ladybugs (no lie), and the smell of cows in the tractor shed. Rain poured through where roof shingles had once been, and winter winds howled through weathered old barn boards, yet it still stood proud, waiting for someone to care. ( . . . but that is another story)