The need to create 1

As long as I can remember, like many children, I drew, painted, and sculpted. By 14 I was drawing and painting all the time, but was told by my grandfather that if I continued I would end up like my father, (my father was in a asylum where he was given a lobotomy so he could funtion in society as a "normal" human being). I continued to draw and paint anyway. My grandmother understood and when I was 16 presented me with an easel to encourage me. When I was 17 I went to Europe to "find" Picasso (my travelling companion's family owned a home next to " Le Maître" in Mougins on the Côte d'Azur). I never met Picasso but I saw the world where he lived. Europe for me was like being in a huge museum, art everywhere!


Veil homme assis Mougins Picasso


Back in California I went to art school. When I was 21 I built a houseboat in Sausalito. It was a wonderful time! Then more and more people came. I was making sculpture, out of debris found on the shore, in the mud at low tide. When the tide came back in it was as if the sculptures were floating. The new people were organizing, they formed an association, they made laws. One of the laws said I could no longer make sculpture in the mud. I left.



"Yuppies" Pionteki Kehrlein 1969


I went back to art school where I was told that I would never be a sculptor. I had it's good points though, for 12 hours a day I was drawing, painting or sculpting! My painting teacher had studied with Hans Hoffman and passed on to me Hoffman's theory on color.


William Joesph Shann III Pionteki Kehrlein 1972



In 1974 I returned to Europe,Paris, Aix en Provence.




Montagne Sainte Victoire Cezanne



to be continued............