The need to create 4

Self Portrait 1980


For the next two years I did a lot of commissioned portraits and continued glazing my mothers portrait and my self portrait. In the end of 1980 I moved from the "city" and took a studio in the "Chateau Noir" on the road to Tholonet outside of Aix. Cezanne had a studio in the "Chateau" for 30 years where he painted the Montagne Sainte Victoire.


Chateau Noir- Mont St. Victoire Cezanne


From my room I had the view of the mountain! The Chateau was truely a magical place surronded by tall umbrella pines. I would take long walks in the footsteps of Cezanne. My favorite place was the Bibemus quarry where the Romans first took stone to build Aix.



Bibemus quarry Cezanne


It was here in the quarry, looking at all the beautiful luminescent orange stone, that I started to have urgings to sculpt. And sculpt I did! How ironic, here i was in a place where Cezanne had painted his "flat depth" architectual views of THE mountain and the surrondings and I was sculpting voluptuous forms in stone!


"Demeter" Bimemus stone





Demeter was my first sculpture. It is now in the courtyard of the Hospital in Pertuis in memory of Dr. Catherine Baret who died in a tragic car accident. Catherine was a good friend of mine who commissioned me to paint the maternity in Pertuis. For her my Demeter epitomized maternity




"Cephale" Marbre de Carrare




In 1983 "I left Provence and stayed the summer in Carrare, Italy where I sculpted "Cephale, (exhibited in the Salon des Réalitiés Nouvelles, Grand Palais,Paris,1987). In the fall I moved on, to Paris, working in the Studio of René Coutelle, where I eventually became the head sculptor and responsible of the studio. René introduced me to granit,Maurice Lipsi and the Parisien "Art World".


" Phallos" Exposition Gallery Valmay Paris 1984




Coutelle gave me the keys to a house he owned in Ménerbes in the south of France and On the first day of spring 1985 I started a new and wonderous adventure.

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............