I ran into "Old Honest Abe" the other day.  After we exchanged courtesies and shared some small talk I explained that I needed to write a bio and I didn't know exactly how to approach it.   "Well" he said "just tell the folks about all your accomplishments and if all else fails just tell the truth."  I thanked him very much and we parted. 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            Long ago the venerable Mark Twain once wrote an essay about the Pony Express in which he told of his stagecoach journey to the west. He and the other passengers passed the time by taking note of landmarks and scenic spots along the trail.  One somber place in the Sand Hills was where the mail stage had been attacked in 1856 by hostile indians.  The driver and passengers were all massacred except for one man though badly wounded managed to crawl for help and survived.  A short time later while on the west coast Mr. Clemmons began to question the veracity of that story after having personally met 134 people who themselves survived that same attack.  He said some of them were still finding arrow heads in their flesh they didn't even know they had.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        I your humble correspondent am one of those one hundred and thirty four. Furthermore, I told Samuel Clemmons that years before I ever got rich in the California Gold Rush of '49 I had come out to Austin's Colony by way of Kentucky where I befriended the gallant Jim Bowie.  Together we discovered uncountable mule loads of silver ore but before we could cash it in all hell broke loose in Tejas.  I picked up a musket, donned a grey forage cap and fought in the Siege of Bexar.   Soon we Texians had won our Independence in the Battle Of San Jacinto so I went back to work that silver vein but never found it again.  I wandered around a bit and then in '42 I signed on with John C. Fremont and Kit Carson to blaze a trail over the Rockies.  The very next year I helped Jesse Applegate lead a wagon train to the Willamette Valley and established the Oregon Trail.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         The reader should now know that shortly after my chance meeting with Mr. Clemmons the War Between The States came to a close and that is when I took my grubstake and bought thousands of acres on the edge of the frontier and became a cattle baron.  So naturally Me and Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving took our longhorns down the trail, up the Pecos and on to Montana.  Soon I became so familiar with the Comancheria that Col. Mackenzie of the 4th Cavalry sought me out to be a scout for him on the Llano Estacado and sure as shootin' mine were the first white eyes to gaze upon the Palo Duro.   After the dust settled on the Red River War I became close friends with Quannah Parker.  For the sake of space I will not tell you of my service with Texas Rangers on the Rio Grande and roping mustangs in the Wild Horse Desert.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              But now I must tell you of how Providence changed the whole direction of my life.  At a low point and for reasons I cannot divulge my face was put on wanted posters all over the west. So I determined to head east and lay low for a while and that is when I met Winslow Homer in a Museum in New York City.   He convinced me that I should become an Artist and sent me on a quest and  yes I went on to meet and admire Frederic Remington, Charlie Russell, William Herbert Dunton, Oscar Berninghaus and Arthur Roy Mitchell.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Friends, it's clear mine has been a long and sordid story full of intrigue and danger but what I tell you now is not for the feint of heart.  For years I was held in a dungeon with no way to pay the ransom.  The culprits were a paint brush, a canvas and a palette full of oil colors. The paint brush tortured me while the canvas just stood there like some black-ops officer recording each event and the oil colors.....oh the pretty colors.....they worked on my emotions.  When I didn't mix them right they just turned to mud and laughed at me. Then one day I managed to paint a picture of a horse that looked like a cow.  Suddenly my chains fell off, the clouds parted, the sun shone, and I changed the name of the painting and sold it for fifty dollars.  Some time after that a nice teenage young man from the city wandered into my dungeon studio.  He looked around for a few minutes and then asked me "what's with all the horses and cowboys and stuff?"  Suddenly my tongue was wrapped in a hooey.  How could I explain that I had heard the clarion call of Horace Greeley.  Somewhere through the misty vale  I had "gone west" and now I am a denizen of that historic yet mythic province so vast and rich that only exists for those who seek to find it.  The radio in the corner was playing low, the Rolling Stones had just come on and so I said the only thing I could think of....."I know it's only Western Art.....but I like.....yes I do!"                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      I can tell you of gracious painters who were still breathing when I met them.  They taught me a lot.  One of them is Robert Pummel who told me that "mud is the right color in the wrong place.  And so it is.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            My beautiful wife Susan and I live in the hills outside of Fredericksburg Texas.  We enjoy gardening and raising chickens.  There is always something here to behold; whitetail bucks jousting, a buzzard casting a shadow as big as car, or a friendly jackrabbit who visits our back door.  We remain in awe of God and nature.