Over the years, many painters have influenced my growth as a painter. My painting buddy, Mike Rooney, has been a great help in improving my paintings. Mike is one of my favorite painters and an outstanding teacher. Over the years, my wife, Sharman, and I have purchased at least 15 of his light filled paintings. Two of his large paintings enhance our living room at our home in the Florida Keys.

Bart Walker, a great Idaho landscape painter and good friend, has offered thoughtful criticism of my paintings over the years. I commissioned Bart to paint each of the holes of our Teton County, Idaho, golf course. His 20 paintings captured in a very special way the unique beauty of this very special course. A painting by Bart can be found in about every room of our ranch home in Idaho.

Over the years, I have been fortunate to have taken several workshops. I learned a great deal from Jim Wilcox’s excellent workshop and from watching his outstanding videos. Three of his beautiful paintings grace the walls of our home.

I have also taken workshops by Priscilla Coote, William Welch and Idaho painter, Robert Moore. Robert is the only painter I have ever known who can paint with both hands simultaneously.

I am also a fan of how-to-paint videos. I have a library of perhaps 60 or 70 videos and from each one I think I have taken away something that has helped my journey to become a better painter.

Over the years my wife and I have purchased several paintings by early California masters. At one time we had a very large collection of paintings by artists ranging from Granville Redmond to Edgar Payne to William Keith, Percy Gray and many more. Studying their works humbles mine and examining their work up close enhances my appreciation of the genius of their technique.

Some of the contemporary artists that I greatly admire, besides those mentioned above, are Trevor Chamberlain, David Curtis, the great American maestro Richard Schmidt, Kevin McPherson, Matt Smith and a special favorite of mine, Kathryn Stats.

Painting has been a wonderful hobby of mine and I am glad I didn’t have to make a living as a painter because I know how tough this field of endeavor is, even for the really accomplished painters. Painting has given me a great deal of joy in my life. I find painting complicated enough to require my total concentration, which has served as a complete diversion over the years to the pressures of practicing law. One of the most helpful critics of my paintings is my wife, Sharman, who knows a great deal about art and has the uncanny ability of pointing out areas of my paintings that need to be improved.

Seeing improvement in my work over the years has encouraged me. It gives me great pleasure to be able to donate paintings of mine to charitable events and to the Red Barn Theater in Key West, of which I am a board member. Of course, I give paintings to my friends and to my wonderful children. Every time I paint a Key West chicken, it goes to my wonderful mother-in-law, Lee, who has a large collection of these paintings. I receive more joy from selectively donating and giving away my paintings than I did when I sold them in galleries.