His care required that I spend a good of the time at home to make sure that he was safe and allright. It was during this time that I "took up the brush" - as an alternative to reading. What happened was a complete surprise to me. The creations on canvas were amazing to me. I had no idea that the gift of painting had been hiding inside me all these years. It was intoxicating and I could not stop pa
inting! That first year I created 33 paintings. At the end of that year I had had my first professional show in Los Gatos, California. I found that there was much interest in my work and art criticks thought of my work as typical for one of the 'Old Dutch Painters'. My work now hangs in homes in California, State of Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, Colorado, New Mexico, New York and in the Netherlands, Canada and in Mexico. I always travel with my camera in my bag and when I see something that captures my eye - a moment in nature, perhaps with the light coming in over the water just so or a wave crashing in a magical way - I take a photograph of it. I use these photographic moment pictures as a inspiration for a painting and take it from there giving it my own interpretation. When I working on new piece - it is almost as if I am transported into another reality. It always surprises what appears on the canvas - my arm on hand move as though something else is guidingf them. I love it!
