I began painting my self portrait in 1978.  The winters were real cold that far north those days.  They seemed to last forever.  The sun only rose a few degrees off the southern horizon.  It looked like dawn all day.  The dry snow flakes scratched over the crust of snow like sandpaper.  I went to work before sunrise and the ice crystals in the air formed beams above the street lights.  One day I took a small 110 pocket camera to my walk with me and took a photograph of myself.

People on the bus would move away from me because I radiated cold while the frost and mucus thawed in my beard and scarf.  It took me a few years to understand why they avoided me.  I thought they understood how really terrible I was.  It wasn't all good getting on the bus.  When I stopped walking the cold outer layers of my boots and uniform began radiating inward to my sweaty body too.  I could unbutton my coat but there was nothing I could do about my feet.  It was a sharp long agonizing pain like coming back from nearly freezing to death, every day; day in, day out.  When the spring came I was as ecstatic as a street bum.

Whenever I felt extraordinarily bad and wanted to do myself harm, I slashed angrily at my self portrait.  I did that for seventeen years.

I stopped painting on it in 1995.  I quit doing expressionism.  Expressionism didn't help.  It made me feel worse.  I had grown increasingly envious of my old classmates from university who had teaching posts at colleges.  Almost everyone I knew had "made it" and were protected by institutions and respected by students and colleges.  I saw them smiling in newspaper articles and art periodicals with their splendid art work.  I seethed with jealousy and self loathing.

After 30 years I had to either quit painting or change my attitude.  I changed my attitude because I had made an oath to paint my entire life.  Now I don't consider myself.  I don't look inward, I look outward through my senses and craft and technolgy.  I don't mess with symbols and meaning.  I try not to apply myself as the measure of everything.  I try to be simple and grateful.

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