Jay, I should have known you’d catch my feeble raising of the lid of the bin (there I go again….)

Birgit, Hopper is perhaps too heroic to be subject to bad puns. I’m blaming my attempts on Jay, who clearly is the top dog in this takedown.

A book about Hopper occupies prime space in my studio, which I allow very few books to inhabit. He too has a wonky, if more somber, perspective sometimes– I’m thinking of his farmhouse by the railroad tracks. I plan, when things settle down, to approach simplifying some of my ideas as he does so beautifully. In short, he is one of my heroes too.

Trying to get (take) down the top dog in a rundown mining town. Is that better?

Better than being thrown in a hopper with Bin. I would imagine that he would have some choice things to say about your making graven images.

Allow me to take a contrarian stance. D says that your paintings stand alone, which is true. But I enjoy the “everywhere I go, there I am” quality of your adventures. Every painting is an encounter with a formal motif, but that isn’t all.There’s the atmosphere, the scene, the people, the delight in the history of the place, the capturing, the painting, as it were, with a butterfly net. Then there’s the June Underwoodiness of it – a human landscape onto itself – that, together with all else makes for great narrative. Frostbitten in a parka, trying to get down the town dog in a rundown mining hamlet – that’s where it’s at, and deserves to take its place in the scheme. Title your book “Big Art in Small Places”.

Like Golf, Painting simply and unavoidably reveals who we really are.

The joy of finding the errant shot in the woods is too often tempered by the Tree that stands in the way.

Your paintings help us get around it.

(http://www.leewalton.com/projects/shot_a_day/shot4.html)