n the 40's, during the War, my best friend bought a little Kodak darkroom kit. We made a darkroom in the toolshed, and I got hooked. I was convinced I didn't have the talent, whatever that was, to be an artist, but there was art in my soul, so I became a photographer, which I figured was pretty good, anyway.

Yuba River, Bridgeport, California

It was fun. I became good at it. But despite learning the best darkroom magic, sometimes the image I wanted just wasn't in the physical universe to be photographed. So one day I bought some paints and started painting. When I had finished 12, I entered the whole dozen in an art competition, unaware that the judge didn't think realism was art. He rejected them all.

A fellow artist whose work I admired, advised me to ignore him and enter another exhibit, so I did. This judge liked realism, hung the whole dozen, and gave me 4 awards including "Best of Show". Someone bought another one during the show. A local gallery owner asked me to show my work in his gallery. He sold everything I could paint for a lot more than I had ever thought I could get, until he retired. I miss him.

One day I read an interview with Edward Steichen, one of the early great art photographers, and then curator of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The writer asked him if photography was an art. He replied that years ago he drank a lot of Greenwich Village coffee arguing about that, but now he no longer gave a damn. I liked that. It was the wrong question, anyway.

These days, I paint with Acrylics, Oils, Watercolor, the ancient medium of Casien (Michelangelo, painted the ceiling of the Cistene Chapel with Casein), Egg Tempera, the camera and my Mac. I made the image on this page Voightländer Vitessa and my trusty Mac. Is it a photo, or a painting? I don't know and no longer give a damn. It was Springtime, the tree was green but I saw the reds and yellows of Autunm, and besides, it's pretty.