Notes on Art, life, whatever.    Although I've executed an abstraction on occasion I am by nature an artist in the realist tradition. Jim Sitton taught us to "give each drawing a sense of presence".   In that light I endeavor to capture a certain "spirit" of the thing being drawn or painted and allow its presence to come forth.   My frame of artistic reference is the last 35,000 year history of Western art from Chauvet Pont du 'Arc cave through to the current day.  I feel a kinship to those first draughtsmen-shamen who descended into the darkness by torchlight to contain the spirits of the beasts on cave walls as well as to all who have followed them making their marks, however anonymously, in and on the clays of time. I appreciate the earth's wonders as a cornucopia of artistic possibilities. Therefore, my subjects are widely varied and ranging.  In the work there will be much of the Earth physical sciences and some may hint at my sense of the metaphysical as well.  The style, media and technique in my work will be dictated by the subjects' nature and my feelings toward it at the moment of encounter or imagining. Since early summer 2004 I've divided my time between my home in Georgia and my hometown in Kentucky.  I found my available workspace in Kentucky to be quite restricted and resurrected my devices used in the hotel rooms when I traveled for Unisys.  There I limit my activities to drawings and water media work.  This has proven to be an adequate approach for I was able to execute an essay in watercolor of my hometown in which I had not spent a lengthy time since 1965.  The hyperlink, My Hometown, includes the result of that effort as well as pieces executed before the summer of 2004. Plein Aire I reserve for drawing.  Painting is for me studio work.  I'm much more interested in discovering the potentials of the media than in capturing the ephemeral moments of the landscape.  There was an American art movement that predated Impressionism, it also dealt with light, it was called Luminism.  It's masters trained at the Dulseldorf Academy in Germany, Bierstadt, Durand, Moran. When in my basement studio I work with whatever media that fits the fancy of the moment.  That means I get to get messy with the fumes and such of the oil paints as well as the dry stuff and the watercolor.  On occasion I still whittle a bit and try to improve on my woodworking. I had pretty well put this dream of being the artist on hold for many years to earn a living.  Oftentimes it seemed, as Degas lamented, "I've locked everything in the cupboard and lost the key". In 'retirement' I'm trying to fashion a new key.  It is my  hope that any observers will share in the joy that I have in this reawaking.  There's more to come for it's still so early on the longer path.  It's a journey I've made before in my university training and in the hotel rooms of my mid-life crisis.  I hold no misconceptions as to what is entailed.  For me there are no more classes to take.  There's just unlocking the memory cells and getting the synapses to fire correctly once more.  There is much that is lost, much that is to be discovered.  It is Picasso's 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration.   It is a-Muse-ing. I'm into this task relying on the 30 year old memories in studying to get an art degree, many visits to museum shows, three six-foot bookcases of art books collected and studied over those 30 years and whatever can be obtained from public libraries and randomly encountered book sales. Enjoy my work but don't fuss too much over it.  Like the caveman of 35,000 years ago I've gone off to smear some kind of dirty substance onto some other flat surface or to mimic the bear by making scratches on a wall.  Perhaps a bit of it will be somewhat more than that and have some meaning.