Together, our styles create a rich dialogue: her vibrant, dreamlike imagery invites wonder and warmth, while my skeletal motifs—rooted in Oaxaca’s Día de Muertos traditions and European vanitas art—are a haunting meditation on mortality. The balance of light and shadow, joy, reverence and sense of fate, gives our studio, called Dos Venados, a unique and deeply meaningful identity. Our art isn’t just about individual expression—it’s a shared narrative of transformation, memory, and the cyclical nature of existence.
"Every man's life is a fairy tale written by God's fingers." Hans Christian Andersen
Showing posts with label memory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label memory. Show all posts
Sunday, February 16, 2025
Artistic Synergy - A Rich Dialogue
Sunday, November 24, 2019
A Heartbeat
Hawaii is about 2,300 miles at a distance now but just a heartbeat away in our mind and heart. This is what experiences do when they enter our psyche. They abolish time and space and become immortal, i.e. they live forever in the vault of memory. Now I am very happy to have the last three weeks immortalized within.
As Seals & Crofts sang in their song, “We may never pass this way again.”
My earthly existence has not been all roses. But I know that when I fully experience life unfiltered, even when it feels unbearable, it is better.
We are writing the book of our lives as we go along.
When we landed in Los Angeles friends took us in. We toured around together and visited the famous Laurel Canyon—of movie, artist and musician fame. Then lunch on Sunset Blvd, and an afternoon at the Getty Museum.
Now we are in Santa Barbara. My two brothers live here. The town has many memories for me. I lived here at one time, and my parents had a home in Santa Barbara for thirty years. My daughter spent some of the last months of her life here—with me beside her.
Today after a family breakfast we went lawn bowling, then I took Amy to see the home my parents lived in. It is close to the Old Mission, so we visited, then walked to the rose garden across the way. Remarkable that roses are blooming. The most fragrant we decided upon was called Peace.
Meanwhile back in Santa Fe it is snowing. We will be there tomorrow.
I have to learn to live with shoes on my feet again.
Sunday, July 23, 2017
Hey Fat Man!
From my
perch atop the wood fence behind my tenement apartment in Chicago,
Illinois, if I spied the delivery man driving through the alley I gave him a shout out: Hey fat man!
The big negro would smile, wave through the open window and respond with a cry, Hey
skinny boy! It became a game for
both of us. I was four years old.
I had
a tricycle that I rode on the pavement behind the apartment. One day
a woman was hanging wash on a line and I accidentally bumped my bike
into her pail of clean clothes. Oh my, did she lash out scolding me. It was the first instance of human rage I ever experienced. I
began crying loudly. My mother came outside, gathered me safely in
her arms and apologized to the neighbor. I remember mother was
embarrassed—another new feeling to me. Thus the beginning of learning
about differentiation.
I
played at a nursery school in the afternoons. It was a big place in Hyde Park for the children of poor families. We had guided play, meals, nap time on cots, and recess where we ran outdoors
on a concrete playground that had a stagecoach in the corner.
My first playmate was Darnell. He was black and I am white but neither of us knew. We did not know how to differentiate. I can still remember the love
between us and pure joy of innocent comradeship. We were soulmates!
Our building was heated in the winter
by a furnace in the basement that burned coal. During the cold months, a huge mound of
black rock was piled out back. The building janitor
was responsible for keeping coal in the furnace. He became friends of
ours and one night my father took me to see him shoveling
coal into the furnace. In the darkened room, the fiery furnace sounded with roaring flames. The iron doors opened. I stood at my father's side, reaching to hold his hand. The fire was at my eye level just feet away. I felt the
warmth and saw the dancing light—like magic. Then the doors shut with a clang and we
went upstairs. I could feel the love of my father and the
janitor. They too witnessed the simple beauty of the moment; made
special through my first experience of it.
I
always slept with my brother Wade. One Sunday morning when I woke up,
he was not beside me. I went to my parents and asked where he was. He
could not be found. We looked all over. My mother was so frantic she looked under the living room couch although it only had an inch of space. In despair, the janitor was
called upstairs to help us. I went in the darkened closet near my bed. Lifting up a pile of dirty laundry on the floor, there was Wade—fast asleep.
Everyone gave out a cry of relief and some laughter followed.
I will
never forget my mother getting down on her knees and looking under
the couch.
Labels:
biography,
brother,
Chicago,
coal,
differentiation,
emotions,
Fat,
furnace,
Love,
Memoir,
memory,
play,
poor,
Psychology,
Race
Sunday, October 02, 2016
Red Leaves
Deep within the vault of my memories,
full now with six decades of life, is an episode of rapturous wonder,
thrill, and happy connectedness. Veiled and buried with so many
other memories, once in a while it comes to mind, as it did the other day.
Late summer is now shifting into the autumn season, and the colors
have been summoning me to paint outdoors. Temperatures begin cool and become balmy. One day I drove about an hour out of the
city to one of my favorite places; the Rio Grande Gorge. Following
the twisty, softly flowing river through volcanic rock canyons, I
found a scenic area by a bend. I climbed out to scout for a
scene to paint, and took my camera. Amidst tall reeds at the river edge, the only sounds were the gurgling of water and
paddling of ducks congregated on a log by the other side. Among the
green shrubs and brilliant yellow blooms, I spotted some crimson
leaves—a sure sign of the autumn. It was the red foliage that
jarred loose the buried memory, so pleasant and nostalgic.
When I was but six or seven years old, beginning school in La Grange, Illinois, (a suburb of Chicago) the
class went on a field trip at the beginning of Autumn. We
drove out into the country to a nature preserve. The weather was
perfect—blue skies and the lingering warmth of summer coming
from the earth. Colors of nature were already changing. Several
teachers watched over the group of children from various classes. A sense of happiness
and love pervaded the day. Something thrilled me and touched my soul
with wonder—to be out of the confines of a classroom, yet with
adults who took pleasure along side of me and the other children. The
sky seemed so blue, like I had never seen before, perhaps because the
colors of the trees and fields were burnished so brilliantly orange,
red and yellow. To walk in the grass almost up to my waist and hear it swish, while
smelling the aromas of plants and fertile, moist earth . . .
I came upon an oak leaf that had fallen
onto the path at my feet. It's red color surprised me and I became
aware how color could arouse my senses. I still remember that leaf.
Later the class went among tall reeds
and cattails by a pond. It was there that I saw a snake slither by,
gliding in the water, wriggling rapidly while holding its head up. I
thrilled at the sight and also the slight danger of something
foreign, mysterious, and alive arriving out of the deep dark water.
The visit was over after a few hours
and we went back to school. I do not remember the school as clearly
as the sights and sounds of that day in nature.
At the Rio Grande, as I relished the nostalgia of that
memory, I stopped to gaze at the red leaves, while listening to the
river flow and feeling the sun warm on my skin. Hiking back to unpack
gear and make a painting, I trampled among sage bushes. They released
an indelible pungent aroma that had a medicinal effect on my senses
and mind.
The painting flowed through me the same
way as the memory.
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Rio Grande Gorgeous, oil on linen, 14 x 18 inches |
Sunday, February 22, 2015
A Circle
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Street photo, Madrid, spain |
In the film, Rimbaud says to his fellow poet Paul Verlaine, “I understood that I was to experience everything in my body—it was no longer enough for me to be one person. I decided to be everyone . . . I decided to be a genius . . . I decided to originate the future.”
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Street photo, Florence, Italy |
SENSATION
In the blue summer evenings, I will go along the paths,
And walk over the short grass, as I am pricked by the wheat:
Daydreaming I will feel the coolness on my feet.
I will let the wind bathe my bare head.
I will not speak, I will have no thoughts:
But infinite love will mount in my soul;
And I will go far, far off, like a gypsy,
Through the country side-joyous as if I were with a woman.
-A. Rimbaud
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Street photo, Barcelona, Spain |
Sunday, January 25, 2015
The Whole Picture
![]() |
Self-Portrait, Berlin 2008. Oil on linen, 24x18 inches. |
So far, I have gone through my memories from birth to the beginning of college. I am trying to see who I am by looking at the movie of my life . . . and watching myself from the beginning. I don't want to censor anything either . . . but see the whole picture as it has emerged. I am an artist, and as I see the artwork that has been created thus far, I can take my brush in hand, and then more confidently paint the future as it is meant to be.
Sunday, June 01, 2014
Candle Burning At Both Ends
Heidi Of The Mountains took off to
Mexico for a week with a few girlfriends, and now it is my turn.
San
Francisco is just a few hours away by air and it holds special
significance as being where I spent the last months of my oldest daughter's
life with her. After Naomi's death in 1999, I would go back every spring
and find the same places that now hold her footprint and summon my
memory. I stay in the same hotel—The Seal Rock Inn, by Sutro Park,
and it feels like home. Golden Gate Park is nearby, and I know it
like the back of my hand. Each morning I go to a coffee house that is
a local landmark, along Ocean Beach. I may stop and watch the surfers
in wet suits, some of them kite surfing.
![]() |
Sutro Park, looking down to Ocean Beach |
![]() |
The Thinker, at Legion Of Honor Museum |
![]() |
Windmill in the Golden Gate Park |
As usual, I will go across the Golden
Gate Bridge, driving north to Sausalito and then over to the redwood
forests. I like to go to Muir Beach, where Naomi and I visited, and I
set up my easel and make a painting on the hillside by the coast,
where I can look out over wildflowers to the little cove and see the
Pacific Ocean waves frothing white as they churn toward the shore.
I always go to art museums, and check
out the current exhibitions. And there is a sushi restaurant I always return to, and the Japanese chef is at the bar . . . it is a family business . . . and I notice how everything is the same; the wooden tables, the view to the street, the sushi bar with it's delicacies in view, and the same guy, aging little by little, year by year, but cordial and smiling as ever.
![]() |
The hills along the Pacific Ocean near Muir Beach |
When Naomi was with me, we were like
candles burning at both ends. Each day we sought magic and healing,
and though she was dying, I could see how she relished the moments
she had left. For me, always next to her, every moment had a special
poignancy, so when I go back, now, years later, the poignancy comes
from touching familiar places that summon
all my feeling from memories.
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Life Away From The Familiar
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The coast of Sicily |
“Once
you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and
over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off
from the journey.” – Pat Conroy
The experiences of life away from the
familiar that comes from distant travel are not for everyone, but for
me, the exciting effects of combining known elements with unknown
ones is essential. I need to travel, to experience the freedom of
motion that carries the possibility of expanded consciousness.
Written upon the tablet of my memory are indelible streams of life
that have come from living like the wind carving through space and
time without inhibition, even circling the globe. I feel the fire of this passion that
burned so bright and joyously unencumbered for the entire year of
2008, and is still alive with burning embers of that lovely flame—ready
to leap into intensity again at the slightest opportunity.
![]() |
Masai youth, herding cattle . . . Tanzania |
![]() |
Camel at the Great Pyramids, Egypt |
The feeling to explore new life is
coming these days like an imperative. The flames that died down now
long to spring forth once again. It almost hurts me to be settled. The strange apparition of a whirling dervish must
challenge most peoples consciousness. Who could possibly care to live
without being the occupant of a home? For most, home is where the
heart is, but I also observe it is where stuff accumulates and that
stuff requires guardianship. I don't care to be watching over stuff.
To do so requires maintenance and expenditure. Let loose I say.
Material possessions do not hold
more for me than a soft breeze and warm sunlight upon my skin, a bird song in my ears, the sight of new terrain to explore, and
the incredible luxury of time, with the only requirement being that of
awe and wonder.
![]() | |
At Ipsos, on the island of Corfu, Greece |
![]() |
Halong Bay, Vietnam |
Come, Come, Whoever You Are
Wonderer, worshipper, lover of
leaving.
It doesn't matter.
Ours is not a caravan of
despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow
a thousand
times
.
Come, yet again, come, come.
Sunday, November 17, 2013
The Storehouse Of My Mind
Here is a sample, taken from a chapter on Belize:
They ambled casually together, past the
run-down shops, enjoying one another enough that each day when they
happened to meet, they grew friendlier. The black man, Hugh, had
buttery cocoa skin and wore his hair in dreadlocks. He wore old jeans,
a tank top, and flip-flops on his feet. Outside a cafe one afternoon,
the traveler asked Hugh if he would have his picture taken. Hugh
posed bashfully, eyes twinkling and lips tightly shut. The traveler had to put down his camera and smile himself
before Hugh at last grinned. Then the best picture was taken, with
Hugh smiling broadly and showing a gaping hole in his top row of
teeth—so that his tongue pushed through the gap.
One afternoon, Hugh took the traveler
to his house. They walked out of town, about a half mile along the
beach, past some respectable private homes until they reached a
curve, and then, looking past a little fresh water stream emptying into the
sea, Hugh pointed toward an area where it appeared a jungle had
marched to the shoreline. "My place is back there," he said. They walked on and soon could spot a
ramshackle hut. “My girlfriend Susie is home . . . we been
together awhile . . . she is good!” He said, winking at me with his
toothless smile. As we neared the hut, I noticed how primitive it
was. “I built it myself” he said, “out of stuff I found.” The
traveler peered into the windows lacking glass or even screens and
imagined what might happen during a storm. “What about when it
rains?” he asked. Hugh grinned and replied right away, “My
girlfriend and I fight over the dry spots.”
We came to the front steps and Suzie
stepped outside, smiling broadly.
She was plump and homely and had dreadlocks like Hugh. They went inside. There was nothing there but a few kitchen utensils and dilapidated sticks of furniture. They went out back and Hugh showed his primitive operation for collecting juice from harvested Nomi fruit, which he marketed. The traveler suggested photographing Suzie. She perked up to the idea, put down her glass of rum and changed into a hand knit dress in Rastafarian colors, barely covering her torso and ended just above her knees.
She was plump and homely and had dreadlocks like Hugh. They went inside. There was nothing there but a few kitchen utensils and dilapidated sticks of furniture. They went out back and Hugh showed his primitive operation for collecting juice from harvested Nomi fruit, which he marketed. The traveler suggested photographing Suzie. She perked up to the idea, put down her glass of rum and changed into a hand knit dress in Rastafarian colors, barely covering her torso and ended just above her knees.

Hugh did not come back before the
Traveler left. That afternoon, he burned a cd with the pictures of
Suzie. The next day he went back to Hugh’s but the place was empty.
Looking around at the shack one last time, he placed the cd on the
kitchen table and left.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Perplexed At War
There are events that happen in life that have a way of embedding themselves so deeply and suddenly into the psyche that they seemingly cause time to stand still. The news is such that when it is delivered, a person stops as if frozen, then takes account of his surroundings, as if checking to see if life will pick up and start again.
On November 22, 1963, I was playing with my best friend at his house when the maid entered his bedroom and announced in a sad and incredulous voice that President John F. Kennedy had been shot to death. That was 48 years ago, and I still remember the moment like it was yesterday. Our happy play stopped and all three of us shared a bewildered silence, not particularly knowing how to carry on.
On September 11, 2001, I was in my home when a repairman came to work, and when he entered the house, announced that a plane had hit the World Trade Center in New York City. I turned on the television and the news was unfolding, with pictures of the airliners hitting the towers, played again and again. It seemed unreal, and also unreal that life could continue normally.
Today is the tenth anniversary of the attack on America that killed 3000 innocent people.
The event will never be forgotten . . . and yet life continues as it has since the beginning; toward an uncertain future.
I have traveled around the world and seen our beautiful planet in its glorious diversity and splendor. It is such pleasure to be friends with strangers and overcome outward differences. The human heart has a deep yearning toward unity. This is why I am constantly perplexed at war.
On November 22, 1963, I was playing with my best friend at his house when the maid entered his bedroom and announced in a sad and incredulous voice that President John F. Kennedy had been shot to death. That was 48 years ago, and I still remember the moment like it was yesterday. Our happy play stopped and all three of us shared a bewildered silence, not particularly knowing how to carry on.
On September 11, 2001, I was in my home when a repairman came to work, and when he entered the house, announced that a plane had hit the World Trade Center in New York City. I turned on the television and the news was unfolding, with pictures of the airliners hitting the towers, played again and again. It seemed unreal, and also unreal that life could continue normally.
Today is the tenth anniversary of the attack on America that killed 3000 innocent people.
The event will never be forgotten . . . and yet life continues as it has since the beginning; toward an uncertain future.
I have traveled around the world and seen our beautiful planet in its glorious diversity and splendor. It is such pleasure to be friends with strangers and overcome outward differences. The human heart has a deep yearning toward unity. This is why I am constantly perplexed at war.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Chicago
The place of your birth will always have special meaning as your entrance spot into this world. Furthermore, the elements that formed your body in that place, infused their memories in your bones. The life of your mother, and her perceptions and experiences during pregnancy arrived with you in gestation—what she ate, drank, perceived, and thought.
I was born in Chicago, Illinois. My family moved when I was nine and I grew up in Washington, DC before finally settling as an adult in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Sarah, my youngest daughter, was born in Santa Fe and after high school chose Columbia College in Chicago to pursue her study of dance. Interestingly, she returned to my birthplace. Sarah has lived in the “windy city” for almost five years and this past weekend, graduated with a Bachelor of Art degree.
Whenever I return to Chicago, I am aware of a distinct sensation. It is as if a familiar vibration comes from the earth, entering my feet and quickly awakening all my senses with an echo of personal closeness. It is as if this intimacy sounds through the pavement and brick, sounds through steel, and ripples in the wind. I feel it in the air pressure, and smell it. All the sensations speak to my core and tell me I have arrived home again.
View my artistic photography of Chicago
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