So Janice helped me get the press set up and I showed her how to create her first print, a dry-point etching on copper. She got the image from the goldfish pond. Below the result.
Down at the Goldfish pond is a pleasant place to be but if you drop a golf ball in there just kiss it goodbye because those swim critters will eat anything. 
The act of creation is to be completely in the Here and Now, the cutting edge of all of infinity, in the moment, the only time that exists, the present.... living the very fact of consciousness....
Bent feather chickens and giant chess at the Nature Park
Two drawings of a poet reading, below, the likeness. Above, the essence...
Under Kris's cool, calm, efficiently helpful and stikingly beautiful exterior beats the heart of a seriously competitive netball player.
This is a photo of me looking for a Savonarola chair at an art exhibition in the old Masonic lodge building on the riverbank at Warkworth in late 2003.
Janice wanted to help finish the music mural so I turned her lose on the country band's clothing. I reckon she cracked it, I love the dress and the blonde hair, there's lots of little delights in painting murals.
Some years ago I was talking with a rough character in the local pub at Warkworth where I lived for 20 years. We got on the subject of Doctors and my companion told me of a rash he had on his hands and forearms which he took to a local Doctor to look at. The Doctor looked at it and without a word began to write out a prescription, probably for antihistamine. My companion told how he got very angry at this and abused the Doctor in no uncertain terms and stormed out vowing not to pay for the visit, big drama because the Doctor could not or would not tell him what the rash was and why the rash was but would without much thought add some kind of drug to the patients system.....
I drew this portrait of Mike with a sepia pencil in my small (A5) parchment paper sketch book.
This painting is a commission, a birthday present to a beloved sister. 
Live music with Marley's mural as a backdrop
Installed in the Waikino hall just a few hours before the opening night
Nearly ready to go to the exhibition, the second mural panel is on the table awaiting it's turn...
Janice helps me finish the painting, we worked day and night for a couple of days to prepare the mural for exhibiting at a local Art Exhibition prior to the mural being installed in Marley's marvelous main street music shop...
It's a standout fact that many people get onto this blog by googling Savonarola's chair.
The Rocket Park mural panels as I left them today, background finished and ladders finished, edges cleaned up.
Thursday night is pool comp at the Sterling Hotel and when a man is standing at the end of two pool tables trying to draw another man's pretty daughter with Denise's ball point pen there is almost constant interruption by pool players trying to get by or around or past me or even, in some cases, actually asking me to move!!
The mural as I left it on Tuesday afternoon. Much time was spent on getting the ladders and chair fixing brackets and background figures and elements just so and I will start to paint the children, six portraits, when I go back to work at the Marae next Monday....
Mondays and Tuesdays is community service at the Waihi Marae and this is what the Rocket Park mural panels looked like when I walked in today, Monday
It's frustrating for me that in relating my life as an artist I cannot tell you much of the people I have met, my family and friends. To be polite, you know, to respect other's privacy.
My friend Janice is a poet and I drew this last Friday while she was watching and listening to musicians at the Local Vocal at Leah's Restaurant. I will see if I can post a new portrait every week
My friend Shirley is an Artist. I haven't seen her since I made this sketch several years ago. I have other drawings and a painting of her too. I like drawing and painting people.
My Dad in the 1930's, back of the desert road on the North Island plateau. I once had a girlfriend who was into horses but I never really took to them myself.
At the age of eighteen I was mad keen on big old American cars. This one was a heap that belonged to one of my pals. My favourites were pre war Fords and Chev's, Dodges, Oldsmobiles.
I completely restored a 1936 Ford V8 pickup and used it every day in every way for years and years and when it was wrecked in a multiple car pile up one dark November night in 1989 I was heartbroken. Eventually I sold the wreck for $3,500- and I resolved that my hobby would from then on be my living and vocation and I used the money to go to Art School and have been driving Toyota Corollas ever since, my petrol head days over for ever...
Now I am parting with the best of a succession of '80-'85 Corolla wagons and have an old '89 Nissan 4WD diesel that stole my heart the first time I used it to drag a trailer load of firewood up a rough wet overgrown track with absolute ease. It's very roomy inside, has a great stereo and just goes and goes and goes anywhere. Ideal for those hard to get at mural commissions...2013 update; I kept KE 70, it is the Artist's car...
The two sheet steel panels that will be riveted onto the rocket at Waihi's Rocket Park playground to represent portholes on the rocket showing children within ready to take off for outer space are taking shape at last.
