Gregg Kreutz

Got a book today "Problem Solving for oil Painters" by Gregg Kreutz.

He breaks up the essentials into: idea, shapes, value, light, shadow, depth, solidity, color and paint.

He's kicking my butt. He's like a black belt taking me out with a pinky. I need my butt kicked.

Paul Oxborough is the other one.

Kreutz can take a single idea and take it to its highest resonance using all the skill of anybody I've seen. This art, painting on a rectangle, is magical to me. It oozes over into everything I am thinking about. How do I organize a program? What do I program? Why do I program? What was I doing when I was plumbing? What were the best weldors doing? While riding in the cement truck, why did the plumber holler at me at the top his lungs, running, "Renaissance Man!!!" When I taught school, what was I aiming for? What of Music: bass, treble, percussions, wailings, poetry compressed into a couple minutes. Why did I leave engineering school for Mathematics? Why is my best memory of surfing sitting alone at sunrise with the pelicans. The mountains in Alabama? Pink Spoonbills on muddy waters. The silhouette of a girl at a neighbor's party. Alone at Big Bend in the desert. Hanging on a thin edge of granite.

Problem solving? Ha! But YES! So much is simply the joy of solving problems. That's funny.