original drawing available here

When I was a young adult my father would not let me get a gun but a bow and arrow was ok. We lived in Kentwood Michigan at the time when small farmers were selling off their land to housing developers in what Howard Kuntsler refers to as "the great suburban build out". This means that when I was young, there were still large chunks of untamed landscape within a short walk from our Brady Bunch two story. I didn't bother with homework, but I did do a lot of rambling in the fields and sections of woods - that had not yet been "developed".

The first painting commission I had was in 10th grade -- I painted a picture for my friend Steve Petzold, of a hunting scene featuring a dog similar to his. My payment was a composite recurve bow. Up to this point I had been making my own bows with mixed success, but this was the real thing and I had a lot of fun with it over the next few years stalking small game in the back woods of Kentwood in the mid 70s.