The Art of Hope & Love: The Memoir Of A Dreamer
Chapter Two: The First Painting
On Hope
Today is more beautiful than yesterday
and tomorrow will be better yet.
Hope is in the mind - not in reality -
which is also created in the mind.
They - hope and reality - are separate
even though they are both
born in the mind.
The shadows of Plato reflecting
through time.
Linda (Lee) and I were married in Sarasota, FL on July 4th, 1964. We had first met in Sarasota in junior high in 1955 but didn't date until 1961, a year before she transferred from Tulane University to the University of Florida. After marrying on July 4, 1964, we moved to New York City, where I was working on Madison Avenue for BBDO...that's Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborn...at the time, the world's third largest advertising agency. My office was at 45th Street and Madison. Today, the building is gone, but the agency lives on in Manhattan on the Avenue of the Americas.
After working in New York City for five years with BBDO and DKG advertising agencies, we moved to Atlanta to handle the advertising account for Fresca (a Coca-Cola soft drink) in April 1969.
I started painting out of frustration...without lessons...with a little bird on my easel. I had bought Linda paint, brushes, and canvases for her birthday in 1965, but she was too busy teaching first grade to enjoy them. I came home from the office and was going through our Christmas cards, and the one from my boss at BBDO, Bruce Macdonald, was so beautiful I knew at that moment I had to paint that card...that card turned into a life-time of passion, not only for art, but it led to the dream that art can love and comfort people and even give them hope.
I immediately got impressed with myself and started painting and believing I was an artist. Once we moved to Atlanta in 1969, a friend of ours who owned an animal clinic suggested I should put my stuff up in his waiting room. Three or four pieces sold soon after they were hung...and yes, I got impressed with myself again. I started having one-man shows around Atlanta. Much of my work was on exhibit at Gene & Gabe's Italian Restaurant at the corner of Piedmont and Monroe Drive.
