This dark morning starts with an email from my mentor and favorite university teacher. He wrote me late in the night, a reply to an email I had sent yesterday. Just 5 sentences made it through the ether, two other replies were blank. I wonder what all he said...

I check in with him once in a blue moon. It has been eleven years since I saw him last. Without him, I would not be working as an artist, the white series wouldn't exist and neither would the manual for living. Without him, I would have dropped out of school again...

He challenged me and he became someone to work for, someone to impress. He had a reputation in the department, women would leave his class crying. He dropped F bombs continually, and if you phoned it in during a critique he would let you know. I knew he would be my favorite teacher instantly, I knew he would be someone I could trust. After I took all the requisite classes I took a lot of independent study and as much as I could under him. We worked well one on one, I even earned a few A+ grades with his tutelage. Seriously who gets an A+ in a college course? I did because I worked my ass off. I graduated with honors and this from someone who couldn't be bothered with high school, barely scraping by. No one really thought I would even go to college, especially to a school with a good art department on the West Coast.

My professor, told me way back then, that I was a true rebel and that delighted me. I could talk with him about the other professors and students and I could be honest and we shared a mutual respect. When everyone else was painting their huge glossy abstract paintings, I was scribbling stories into free bin books, and filling them with charcoal, gesso, red and black. Don't get me wrong, I learned to paint and draw, I had to do the formal work like all the others, but he also let me explore what I had to explore, he let me be true to my muse. To even be able to have a muse in school is a miracle but to have room given to me by a professor to let it grow and be protected was very special.

I owe him a lot. He had a wonderful dark sense of humor, an honesty, and he was unapologetically himself. He was a realist flower painter, and he cracked my world wide open, and I am grateful.

I hope everyone has a great week. Mine is going to be busy. Cue music...