


		My Inspiration I was talking to my dad a couple weeks ago and asked him to mail me some photos to paint. He started talking about how boring everything is out in the desert. "It's all brown and bland, why would you want to paint that?". "Dad", I replied, "I've painted clumps of dirt and they turned out to be some of the best paintings in my portfolio." I don't think I convinced him though, maybe now he thinks his daughter's a little cracked! But the truth is, you really can find beauty in anything. It doesn't have to be a perfect rose, or even a raging sea scape. Some of the most beautiful paintings I've ever seen were of a patch of dirt with a dandilion, or a pile of dead leaves - these were painted by Kathy Caudill, who herself is one of my biggest inspirations. I tend to find beauty not in the subjects themselves, but the forms and contours as well as the depth and shadows and highlights and textures of the finished composition. This is something I think Kathy understands better than most people. When I'm looking for material, I take my camera and a roll of film on an excursion trip. I'll visit creeks and parks, garden centers, and just about any scenic place I can find and take as many pictures as I can. When I develop them, I always ask for double prints. Once the pictures are in, I examine each one carefully for the best composition and crop the photo to it. I'll look through the scraps and find a few more that would make nice paintings as well. These all go into a cache and often I can have dozens of images to choose from. Except for now when lack of a camera and a boost in my productivity have left me without material and completely uninspired.

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