A Short History of Me
In the belief that someone out there might like to read about my past and how I
got to where I am, today, I have compiled a short history of my life.
                                               Roots - The Early Years










I was born in Miami, FL, at a time when Florida was still quaint - or as I like to think of it, B.C., before condos.  
Our neighborhood, called Pinewood, was "lower middle class," filled with small, wood-frame houses on
50'x100' lots (and, before my time, populated by the Pinewood Gang, a small group of local criminals who
robbed and beat up people, but mainly each other).   One neighbor had a double lot which seemed huge.  At
the end of the street was what must now seem to be a true relic:  a vacant lot.  With trees!  Tall, Dade
County pine trees, growing out of palmetto thickets.  Amazingly, around the corner, were other vacant lots.  
So, growing up, I had plenty of places to let my imagination run wild.
Our yard was filled with fruit trees:  mango, avocado, key lime, grapefruit, calamondin, lychee, coconut, and
sapodilla, with Florida cherry hedges ringing the house and one property line.  When I was about five, my
dad built a concrete skating ring - complete with banked curves - in the back yard.  I learned to ride a bike
there (with training wheels) and of course skated - on steel wheels.
We had a large compost pit under the grapefruit tree, next to the small palmetto bug-infested yellow shed
where my dad kept... stuff.  I wasn't too sure what was in there because it smelled so strongly of palmetto
bugs (if you've never smelled it, you just don't know how bad it is) that I tried not to go in there at all.  Twice a
year, we dug the blackest, richest, sweetest compost from that pit I have ever seen to this day - the result of
the year's mango leaves, plant clippings, and many pounds of rotted fruit that we couldn't eat.
Starting at age six, I took piano lessons and for a while had the meanest piano teacher on the planet, a
Russian task-master who would actually pretend to faint if her students did not do well during piano
competitions.  ( I won some medals at those early competitions, some of which were recorded on vinyl.)  
Despite her eccentricities, I learned to love the piano and later got a much kinder teacher who started me
playing contemporary music, along with teaching basic music theory.  At some point my dad bought me my
first guitar - a 3/4 Gibson hollow body electric with a cutaway - which he refinished in white lacquer.  It looked
sharp.  All of this led to an interest in playing music and, in sixth grade, I found myself in my first band,
playing guitar, not piano.  We actually played a lot of gigs, mostly at parties and the like -- lots of fun, which
lasted for several years.
From age six to twelve, I attended Van E. Blanton Elementary School, which seemed pretty far away, but in
reality was probably about a mile.  By sixth grade, I was allowed to walk home, or ride my bike - when I felt
like getting up early enough to ride there!  I found school to be mostly okay; I liked most of my teachers,
hated only one.  The main thing I began to learn during those years was that people can be cruel to one
another, for no apparent reason; and that life just isn't fair, no matter how much your community "leaders" try
to convince you that it is.
One event stands out in particular - though it wouldn't come into play until more than forty years later.  In
1961, I went with my best friend at the time, Olin Vorhies, to the Car Show at the Miami Beach Convention
Center.  I always loved car shows; my dad got me interested in cars at a young age.  So, we often went.  Two
things stand out in my memory that year.  One, Olin and I got our picture taken - a Polaroid! - by a very hot
Car Show Chick (we were ten and very impressed) in a brand new 1962 Ford Thunderbird convertible!  I still
have that photo.
I also still have a keepsake from an unexpected corner and aspect of that public entertainment.  At that show
was a Spin-Art booth.  We paid a quarter or so to take a couple of spins of the paint wheel.  I dribbled paint
into the walled container and watched in amazement as it formed exciting patterns, simply through the use of
gravity and inertia.  I cherished those first works of art, put them up where I could marvel at them each day in
my room, and eventually - as with most things juvenile - put them away in a box.  Forgotten.
(Many, many years later,  I opened one of those keepsake boxes and was happy to discover that, unlike
many other such memories, I had kept this one.  Both six-by-eight inch cards were preserved as if new!  
Keep in mind this was over forty years later and I was now doing the art you find on this site.  I think the act,
and the archaeological find, were prophetic, to say the least.  My roots, possibly my earliest inspiration for
becoming an abstract painter, were here.  I had reclaimed them.)
In sixth grade, a new kid joined our class - John Allen - and we became fast friends.  His father owned six
acres on the Atlantic Ocean in northern Key Largo (which when it sold probably went for millions).  Over the
next few years, I spent a lot of time there with the Allens, John and my school friends who went down with us,
and some friends John knew from when he lived there (through fifth grade) - formative years to say the
least.  Later in life, I wrote a screenplay about some of our experiences (greatly enhanced), and later still,
novelized it.  (Excerpts of both can be found on this site.)
I next attended Horace Mann Junior High School, which was only about half a mile away from our house, with
John Allen's parents' tiny duplex apartment about half way, on 4th Avenue, my street.  During those three
years, we got into all kinds of mischief after school.  Mainly, we would go back to the school and skateboard
on the open-lanai, slick concrete hallways and sidewalks.  And we rode our bikes everywhere we could
convince our parents to let us go. We rode to the movies, to friends', to the Bay, even to Greynolds Park in
north-North Miami - but just once, as that turned out to be insanely too much work!  Going to the movies was
fun, but I had no idea I would ever end up in that business.
Junior high school further convinced me that human beings were far from perfect.  Both teachers and
students proved to be (at least in my mind, and as I had been raised to believe), nearly uncivilized and
completely barbarous to one another, given almost no reason at all for their transgressions.  These were
times of civil unrest.  Desegregation was the word, and Miami was still in the South.  We had riots in Miami,
and we had riots in our school.  One rumble saw some 200 of our students - my friends - fighting and
chasing each other through the halls.  Olin Vorhies got hit in the head with a rock.  I had wisely stayed home.
At first I felt like a chicken; then I realized I was the only smart one.
In Jr. High, I finally found the one sport that I would love my whole life:  surfing.  I went to South Beach, before
it was South Beach - back then, it the habitues were, hookers, heroin addicts and old Jewish people.  The
place had yet to be discovered by Madonna (by 25 years).  I rented a very long, very heavy, board and rode
six-inch waves by the old pier.  But I was hooked.  My parents bought me a 9'-6" Rick surfboard and I went as
often  as my mom would take us to the beach.  (I continued to surf for 35 years.)
By the time I entered high school, in 1967, racial tensions in Miami were thick.  It was The Summer of Love -
but not in high school.  My mother had attended Miami Edison High School, so I followed suit - for two days.  
The conditions there were so atrociously violent that I transferred to North Miami High under the auspices of
studying architecture, which I was truly interested in (and still am to this day).  NMHS was on a modular
schedule, and for the first year I really enjoyed going there.  Then I attended the first Miami Pop Festival at
Gulfstream Park, saw Hendrix, Steppenwolf, Joni Mitchell, Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention, the
Crazy World of Arthur Brown, et al - and smoked my first joint.  My interest in music was renewed (thankfully I
had continued my lessons), along with a new interest in musical improvisation, and I started playing music
with some friends.  We learned to JAM!
Though I was an Honors Student in 10th grade, and Key Club Vice-Preseident Elect, I lost interest in formal
education (the pot helped), and I quit.  But I went back - without the tough courses - and finished my junior
year.  I quit again in May, attended a buy-your-diploma style-school, and graduated (with "A"s) by August.  
So it was that I began attending Miami-Dade Community College while the rest of my former classmates were
still in high school, as seniors.  I didn't miss it.  But I also didn't care for college, much.  An opportunity arose
to move to Boston and play music.  I jumped on it.  We weren't great, and the living was hard, but we had
some fun - even if I was freezing my ass off in my first winter ever!  Try going from 17 years in Miami to
Boston in January. Can we say freezing!  I did get to play at the famous Boston Tea Party once, and we
practiced in the basement of the equally famous Unicorn Coffeehouse - and this in early 1970!
When our time was up in Boston -we had nowhere to live - we headed south to my family's farm in NW NC,
the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Winter here was no better, since the old farmhouse had no running water and
the only heat was the old, drafty fireplace.  Somehow, we made it through, and even managed a few  gigs in
town, Boone, NC, home of Appalachian State Teachers College (now a university).  That summer, after a
disastrous attempt to give Canada a try (our truck blew up en route, outside Harrisburg, PA, and we had to
sell it for $25), the last two of us limped into Miami on a Greyhound bus.  And I hung out.   There wasn't
much else to do.  So, I made the best of it.
I played some music, lounged with friends, surfed when I could, and made one significant life change:  I quit
smoking pot.  At that time, we were smoking pot all day, every day, starting in the morning, first thing.  I had
gotten so used to it that going to the store felt odd if I was straight.  And this was pot that caused other
people, just trying it, to hallucinate and believe they had been dosed with acid or something worse!  So, one
night, I decided to see if I could get too stoned.  I smoked 14 bowls of the stuff - literally - by myself.  Nothing
felt different.  So, I went to bed.  When I woke up the next morning, the desire to smoke pot was gone for
good.  It has never returned.
The next few years saw a lot of travel - Hawaii, the Bahamas, Europe.  One low point that turned into an odd
high point of sorts came in Communist Czechoslovakia when I was in a very bad car accident and spent ten
days in a bloc hospital, in a ward with 50 Czechs.  My stitching up was performed without anesthetics of any
kind, and they diagnosed by fractures incorrectly.  But the hospital staff, the local people, were some of the
kindest, most genuine human beings I have met anywhere in my travels.  They made an awful experience
quite tolerable.  The trip home was worse, as I got the last seat on a crowded airplane - wearing a cast and a
sweater I couldn't take off because I hadn't been afforded a shower in three days - for nine hours, in the
middle seat.  But when it was over, I was happy to be home.
I finished Jr. College, turned 21 in Hawaii, surfing on Kauai for three months, came home, got my B.A. in
Liberal Studies, and got serious about music.  This carried me for the next several years, during which I got
to travel the eastern U.S. a lot with the Wonderful World of Charlie Brown and Yvonne, a black show band
which played the Ramada Inn circuit (the high points included Crown Center in Kansas City and the
Concorde Resort in upstate NY) in which I was the "token white" as we joked.  Great people, with whom I had
a ton of fun.  I went from there to a southern rock band called The Smack Mahoney Band, with some old
friends from Miami.  Since (as I have always maintained) musicians (especially rock musicians) are just kids
in grown up bodies, the year and a half was not always fun and ended suddenly - being fired from the band I
had co-started, because they suspected I was going to quit, when in fact all I wanted was a vacation for
everyone!  Oh well.  I went on to sell cars.
Yes, sell cars.  Remember, I loved cars?  Well, selling them almost made me hate them.  I ended up having
to sue my employers for back commissions.  (I later heard that my boss had failed to pay state sales tax for
may years and ended up paying the price in spades.)  The two good things to come out of these years were,
first, living next door to my parents for two years, and getting closer to them than I had ever been; and, at my
girlfriend of the time's request:  moving away.


                                           The L.A. Years











In 1979, Linda and I moved to Los Angeles.  We chose L.A. because the operators we spoke to
long-distance were the nicest there of anyplace we called.  Perhaps not the best criterion, but I ended up
living there for most of the next 21 years - though Linda left me for a drug-addicted teamster driver within a
year and a half.   Since good things can come from bad things, I wrote my first novel, Chad, in Miami while
visiting my parents trying to get over the break up.
But let's back up, some.  Before leaving Miami, at the suggestion of my slide-guitarist in Smack Mahoney
(one the smartest and meanest people I have ever known), I took a job working for one of the nicest and  
oddest people I have ever known, Egon Stefan, owner of CineTech, a Miami-based motion picture equipment
rental company.  This led to visiting my first set (in Key West), seeing my first movie "star" (Robert Vaughn,
of "The Man From U.N.C.L.E." fame), and meeting a truck driver who would offer a place for Linda and me to
live in L.A. -  whom Linda would end up calling "St. Joan," for his pathetic and chronic martyr syndrome.
I found a job in an L.A. rental house, similar to Egon's but much larger, which led to another rental house job,
at which I met a guy who had written a screenplay.  An actual screenplay.  I had been working "in the
business" for more than a year but had yet to see those kinds of pages in person.  I asked to see his script -
and he said no.  No!  He was worried that I would steal his idea.  (I should have seen what working in
Hollywood was going to be.)  I finally convinced him I was not a threat and he let me read the first page
(only!) of "Wideload!"  A script about towing a double-wide.  Hmmm.  He then let it slip that he was taking a
screenwriting class.  I asked where it was - and he wouldn't tell me!  He didn't want "any more competition" to
get trained!  Unbelievable.
I had to find Sherwood Oaks Experimental School on my own.  But I did.  And I took one of Syd Fields' first
screenwriting classes.  He had just come out with his seminal book, "Screenplay," and gave a terrific class.  
His guest lecturers included John Milius (who had completed "Apocalypse Now', had great Coppola stories,
and was writing "Conan the Barbarian"), Bob Gale and Bob Zemekis (who had completed "Used Cars" and
were still humble, not having gotten to "Back to the Future" yet).  The experience was seminal for me as well.
I got my first teamster job driving for a Lucille Ball tv special.  With little to do, and my own office (just down
the hall from Jack Webb, and across the lawn from John Schlesinger, I wrote my first screenplay, "More Than
Expected" - in longhand on legal pads. The script, once typed, actually got me my first agent:  Lois Lane.  
Seriously.  She was great.  The script garnered enough interest to inspire me on to my second and third
(completely forgettable) screenplays, and a "Quincy:  M.E." spec' which wasn't too bad, but didn't get me any
work.  During this period, Linda and I broke up.  Life was... uncomfortable for a long while (at best).  I lived in
my first (and still favorite) studio apartment in North Hollywood - and started acting.
What was I thinking?  Well, for one, it might be fun.  And it was!  And I met friends, great friends, I still have to
this day.  Bob Bayles being at the top of that list.  He and I used to drive around L.A. with our 35 mm
cameras taking shots of whatever struck us.  Today he has his own site.  (Check it out.  He's a talented guy
who is as real as Indiana, his home.  His other site link is here.  )  I first studied with Tony Barr, a legend,
then moved (at Bob's suggestion) to Scott Arthur Allen's Creative Actors Workshop - not a legend, but a
hard worker with an innate sense of what works and doesn't work in the area of acting naturally on camera.  I
studied there for some eight years, teaching for five of them, where I figure to have directed some 1,100-plus
scenes on-camera.
I also met my first wife, Jane, there.  I thought her to be a extremely talented and pretty actress.  The union
lasted over 13 years, but ended badly.  The best thing to come out of it was my step-son, Christopher, whom
I raised from age six, on (other than visitation times), and with whom I am still, thankfully, as close as ever.  
He's a great kid - now almost 30!  These were good times and bad.  We lived in some great places and awful
ones.  For a year and a half we shared a house with her parents in the Tree Section of Manhattan Beach,
just over the hill from the water.  I surfed as often as was possible.  Later, we moved to my favorite house In
Toluca Lake, on Talofa Street.  Bob Hope lived around the corner, Markie Post across the street.  We met
Markie, not Bob.  Dudley Moore lived nearby, as did Henry Winkler and the Olsen Twins.  We were
surrounded by celebrities, but barely hanging on.
During this period, I got my first big break.  I was working for a defense contractor in Burbank, editing
technical manuals for parts of nuclear submarines.  I had a "secret" clearance, but never had any idea what I
was reading.  It was all just technical gibberish, but it paid the bills.  (I also wrote, photographed, edited and
laid out the company's in-house organ.)  I got a call one day from a producer I had met through a friend of
another long-time friend Susan Rush (more on her later).  The guy, Mark DiSalle said he had a feature
writing project for me, possibly.  There was only one problem, the lead actor didn't speak very good English.  
I said, "What is he, Belgian?"  There was a long silence, then Mark said, "Yes.  How did you know?"  I said, "I
was kidding.  You're kidding, right?"
He wasn't.  The actor was Jean-Claude Van Damme.  The project was to be "Bloodsport" and I had a good
shot at it, if the meeting went well.  The meeting went very well, and it looked like I had the job.  But at the last
moment the gig went to two writers who had a deal at the distributor, Canon Films.  That movie got made,
introducing Van Damme, and DiSalle had a deal to make another film.  He pitched three ideas to me and I
chose "Kickboxer" as the most viable.  That proved to be a good choice as the movie got made, I wrote it, got
credit (though I had my story credit stolen - par for the Hollywood course), and got some other offers
because of it.  The short version:  I made some money; but not what I or anyone else anticipated.  During
this time I was also very sick.  I had a mystery disease which later turned out to be - after several
misdiagnoses - Epstein Barr Syndrome, or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.  Whatever they called it, I was sick for
three years.
I might have stayed sick had I not, by chance, visited a great doctor, Bruce Manchan, who had a cool
daughter named Noel, who also had Chronic Fatigue - badly.  Much worse than I.  So, Bruce sought out a
cure for her, and found a 94 year-old wheelchair-bound former medical doctor turned homeopath, in a trailer
park in Long Beach.  As crazy as it all sounded - the weird little testing machine, the vials of... stuff - it
worked.  I went for seven weeks, getting an injection (of, get this:  Brucelosa) each time, and the old guy said
I was cured!  I didn't feel cured.  But he assured me I was and that, in a few months, I would feel much better.
In about one month, I felt like I could do a push-up, and did.  Within another month, I was doing fifty.  (Prior to
that, there had been times I would have to crawl to the bathroom; when I was otherwise in bed 24/7.)  What a
relief!  I had written all of "Kickboxer" in this condition, having to take naps in the basement garage before
and after meetings with DiSalle.  Fortunately, he had suffered from the same disease and was
understanding.          In 1991, my mother died.  A year earlier, she had dealt with cancer but had seemed to
overcome it.  When I visited her that summer, she was doing well, and in November she told me she felt
better than she had in years.  Just a month later, around Christmas, she had an intestinal blockage.  When
they went in to fix that, the doctors discovered that she was "full of cancer" as I was told.  Miraculously, she
hung on through a great amount of discomfort, until April.  I flew back for her last week and she literally died
in my arms.  The funeral was the hardest thing I had ever done - seeing my dad finally break down just about
killed me.  For both of us, when they shut and sealed the casket was miserable.  My mom, Verona Jean
Sizemore Bruce, was a smart, funny, wonderful woman filled with life and love.  She is missed on a daily
basis, still.
An odd aside, while Jane and I were in NC during this, a friend was watching Chris, who was about 12 at the
time.  At that time, the (San Fernando) Valley Rapist was following women and raping them in their homes.  
One night, Chris and his little friend Ronnie were out in the back yard with our dog Maybelline (only the best
dog ever!).  She started barking, something she rarely did.  A moment later, a large dark man lept from the
thick hedges, hopped the fence and bolted.  Chris never mentioned it to his sitter.  A few nights later, the
sitter was out for a drink (!), and Chris was alone.  He looked out the back sliders and saw the same man in
the back yard, staring at him.  So, of course, what did Chris do - open the door!  He yelled at the guy to "get
the fuck out of our yard!"  At twelve years old.  When the man didn't leave, Chris went and got his pump BB
gun, pumped it up for all it was worth and opened the door again.  He warned the man to leave or he would
shoot.  This time the man came for him.  So, Chris shot him.  With his BB gun.  Apparently the shot was loud
and strong enough to make the man stop and think it over.  He ran off, never to return.  To this day we are
fairly sure, based on descriptions on the news, etc., that Chris shot the Valley rapist in our back yard.
In 1992, after I had not made a lot of money, I was sick of L.A.  That year had seen floods, mud-slides and
rioting after the infamous Rodney King trial.  (Chris and I fled Toluca Lake to meet Jane in Sedona, AZ, as
L.A. burned, the fires getting closer and closer to out home.)  In June, I made a scouting trip to Florida, and
rediscovered my home place.  Juno Beach felt right.  I came back excited.  That night, at four in the morning,
the Landers Flat earthquake hit -  the strongest quake in 50 years.  (Two years before the larger Northridge
quake which we missed!)  In August, we packed everything we had in two Budget trucks, all of our furniture -
and rented a furnished house.  (Five years and $10,000-plus of air-conditioned storage later, I decided that
if I ever moved again I would sell everything - just in case.)  We arrived in Florida two days before Hurricane
Andrew.  I was beginning to think it wasn't safe to be me!  But we drove up to Orlando and weathered the
storm there, thankfully untouched.  Because this was a hurricane the likes of which I had never seen in all my
growing up in Florida; and I had been through Hurricane Donna, among others.  But nothing was like
Andrew.  Nothing.
I had found a job, ahead of time, at the prestigious Palm Beach County School of the Arts.  (The year I left,
2,200 applied, 160 were accepted.)  I taught "Screenwriting," "Producing," and "Directing" to 10th and 11th
graders for two years under the best dean anyone could have, Ancil DeLuz - a wonderful guy from Trinidad.  
During that time, I was hired to write a few features and flew out to L.A. a few times.  Again, both good times
and bad.  I wrote a lot, surfed a lot, enjoyed living in Florida (with summers at my family's mountain home),
and felt like I got a lot done.  Chris was growing up - if with a few bumps in his road of life.  When he
graduated, we decided to leave Florida.  We moved to NC, but didn't stay long.
Ojai, CA, is a picturesque little town in a lovely valley north of Ventura.  People who live there told me that it
is a place that often forces change.  The Indians (and subsequently the New Agers) believed Ojai to be
loaded with mystical power spots.  (One of my early influences, J. Krishnamuriuti, has a memorium-house
there.) The town is loaded with seers and masseuses.  It was here that our marriage came apart.  Chris was
out on his own, doing well, and the time had come to face what was and wasn't working in the union.  None of
this time was fun and, as mentioned, the whole thing ended badly.  But that's how life does, or doesn't work,
and we move on.  If we can.
The divorce took two years and was even less fun than the run-up to it.  I lived a Kato Kaelin (an old friend
from acting class, by the way) life in the guest house of a grandly generous, old friend Robin Siegel
(make-up artist on "Friends") for awhile, made a sparse living doing handiwork for my wonderful ex-agent
Wanda Moore, and got by - a learning and growing period, as they say (perhaps disingenuously!).  At the
end of our agreed-upon time in Robin's guest house, I decided it was finally time to make a Big Change.  So,
I did.


                                          And Now, Here I Am











In 2000, I moved permanently back to my home place in NC, just outside Blowing Rock.  I wrote a lot, worked
on the Farm, as we call it, and tried to assimilate - which went a lot easier than I had ever thought it would.  
My neighbor, the inimitable Susan Hazlewood, introduced me to her circle of friends and I felt at home.  I
didn't do so well with winter, and spent that first one in Florida.  But the next year I met a woman, dated a
while, and decided to tough it out.  Though I wasn't sure I would make it (!), the winter was gratefully mild,
and I survived - if that relationship didn't.  The next step:  online dating!  Talk about being unsure of
something.  But it wasn't so bad; I met some nice women, had some fun times, learned some more about life
(!), and life went on.
 Through an old friend artist and college professor Wendy Robbins, whose family owns the regional favorite
theme park Tweetsie Railroad, I wrote some of their daytime train cowboy shows, and their annual night time
Ghost Train show.  Working with her brother Chris who runs the park now, we came up with some new
concepts which turned out to be tricky to put up, but were very exciting.  And the Ghost Train show was - as I
was told by many people - probably the best they had ever done.  All in all a great experience with some
terrific people.  Shortly thereafter, things changed dramatically - for the best - thanks to Yahoo Personals!
When LouAnn Phillips (the one and only, whose maiden name is Imperator!) answered my ad, she had only
had hers on for a day, having had not such great luck before.  But she liked my picture and profile and
responded.  The problem was that I was seeing someone I had also met online.  So, I respectfully declined.  
But two days later, it was over!  So, I wrote back.  We emailed a few times back and forth then decided to talk
on the phone.  The date was November 1, 2002.  On November 2nd, we met for a beer at the old Caribbean
Cafe in Boone - and the rest is wonderful history  We have been together ever since and I, who have a
terrible time remembering dates, have an easy anniversary to remember!













I credit Lou with many of the recent, important improvements in my life.  At her suggestion, I applied for a
teaching position at Appalachian State University - and got it.  As an adjunct, I teach "Acting for the Camera"
and "Screenwriting," two courses that I am obviously very comfortable leading.  I am currently in my third
semester there, looking forward to expanding my course load to include advanced versions of both classes.  
Also because of Lou, I have begun writing short stories, something I had never had any luck with at all.  But
this summer, I have already written ten, just under a hundred pages worth.  For my part, I have introduced
her to surfing; and though she's only been once, she's addicted - and this is someone who has always been
afraid of the ocean!  We travel a lot, and travel well together.  And she has been invaluable in keeping my
paintings - and that part of my business - organized (something I don't do all that well, being as right-brained
as I am).  We both feel we were truly lucky to find each other - and on line, in the same small town!
Which brings us to the painting.  After turning 50 - I was 51 - I mentioned an interest in painting abstracts -
something I had always wanted to do but never had the courage to try.  Lou said, "Why not?"  So, I went for
it.  I bought a large canvas, gathered together all the latex wall paints that we had used to paint the inside of
my house - a converted barn we call the Barn - and went outside on the lawn.  I was amazed and delighted at
how the paint felt going on that first raw, canvas.  So smooth and visceral.  As I began to sling and layer the
paint - developing my own techniques and secrets as I went - I just knew this was something I wanted to keep
doing.  But just to make sure I was on the right track, many months later when the painting was done, I called
the only artist I knew well at the time, Kevin Beck, a pastel landscape artist with a great track record and his
own gallery.  I invited him and his wife Judy to dinner with the caveat that he honestly critique my first finished
painting.  I also invited a local art enthusiast (though I didn't realize this at the time) Lee Hyett, owner of The
Inn at Ragged Gardens and a friend, Virginia Jones, a native of Blowing Rock (whose family owned the
property where Chetola is, now).
Lou and I fed them nori wraps, then I unveiled #1, Crane's Domain - The Everglades (or, as Lou still calls it,
The Barn, since all the paint came from cans we used on the walls of the Barn!).  They all said they liked it -
"No, really!" - and that I should continue painting.  So, I did (as you can see from the rest of this site).  We're
now up to about a hundred paintings, and sold 30 in the first year - something we never dreamed of when we
started.  And so I say a special THANKS! to everyone who bought a painting; you got me started and kept
me going!  We've had three shows now, two at Ultima Galleria, thanks to Paula Redfield (who offered to have
a showing for me when I had never had a showing before!), and one with Lee Hyatt at his Canaan Gallery in
his Inn at Ragged Gardens (almost three years after he was one of the first to see my first painting), the
Moore Street Gallery in Blowing Rock, and the John Turchin Galley in the great rain Robbery in Banner Elk.
    Lou and I were married on our seventh anniversary on Haulover Beach in Miami.  The sun and water
were warm, the day was perfect and we were both joyous.  We just celebrated our one year marriage
anniversary and our eight years together anniversary on November 1st, and continued in our joy and
support of each other in this wacky thing called Life.
    I have been writing more than painting and have completed over six new screenplays in the last three
years - two in the last five months - and I am always rewriting or editing something, planning the next.  I
guess it's in my blood.
I hope I haven't bored you with my life story; I put it here just in case anyone was interested.  Please enjoy
the rest of the site and visit the linked sites of Bob Bayles, Kevin Beck, Zoey Brookshire, Wendy Robbins,
etc.!  They're all great with fun things to see and read!