Open Prairie Print

Just over 20 years ago now I was living in Zürich in a beautiful apartment overlooking the city, the Zürich “Sea,” with the Alps just off to our left, and watching sunsets on a copper roof deck. I was engaged at the time (long story for another time) and my fiancé said to me one evening as we were watching the sunset, “we should paint.” Since we (she) had just furnished this beautiful two-bedroom apartment I figured she now wanted to paint the place and so I asked her that very question. “No, we should get some oil and canvas and paint!!” She was extremely excited about the prospect of the two of us becoming Swiss artists or something and so we did go out and buy some canvas and paints and thus began my efforts at playing with putting color to canvas and making it look like something other than mud!! Mud is exactly what the early paintings looked like since I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, how to move paint around on a canvas, how to blend colors without it turning to mud. Over time I came up with a way to at least put something on canvas that I didn’t hate. Then I was asked to do a show at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. This long, tall, very well-lit hallway in their main atrium. Six months and twenty-four paintings later I had a show up. Crazy!! People immediately started saying “you should go bigger.” Again, I had no idea how? Eventually, I got some large canvas and started playing around again. Oil on a large scale is difficult, scary, smelly, and takes forever to dry, and I had a cat. So, for my next adventure, I got some acrylic paints and huge canvas and began to experiment again. The result was very different, and a lot of fun, and a great deal of color. Next up, “I really like that, can you do it in black and white?” If you really like it, why are you asking me to do something totally different? Anyway, I started playing around with black and white and wound up with something totally different that people seemed to like and a handful of commissions came out of it, cool. Eventually, I got around to playing with pouring acrylic onto large canvas, a few old window frames, and an old rusted model-T door, and thus the paint flows were born. Also, lots of fun. I am not sure what is next, but looking forward to finding out along with all of you.