Initiation 1 aka Worship • watercolor on paper 14″ x 11″ • collection of Stephen Hutcheson. This was the first sale of my new art that was emerging that winter from a collaboration of my hands and heart; created in early February 1974 then being seen & bought shortly thereafter by my friend Steve, who insisted on buying it, even though I wanted simply to gift him with it, after he had complimented me on the finished piece. When I saw that he wasn’t going to accept it as a gift, I said “How about fifty dollars?” and he said fine. First Sale of what I saw as my true creativity. However, I wasn’t ready to quit the day job I didn’t even have yet! Having burned a major bridge behind me by destroying my fashion illustration portfolio, I found myself terrified at the prospect of looking for a full time job again, after the number of years I had been working free lance, making my own hours. The thought of job hunting, filling out applications, writing resumes, scared the pjeezus out of me due to the number of negative past experiences I’d had in jobs found and lost. The idea of working 9-5 in an office was even more scary, so through that power of self-deception we all possess, I managed to avoid a serious job search, enabled by smoking grass and spending hours cruising for the quick fix of sex – looking for love is a lot of wrong places. My past lover who had moved to Indiana to pursue a career as an orchestral conductor had already picked up another lover, as soon as it became obvious that I wasn’t going to follow him there to pursue a career as a teacher. He had visited me in New York in December, at which time we realized the chances of our living together again were slim. Far from being committed to finding a job of some kind to support my art-making habits, I was more and more enjoying the escapist delights of reading, and through exploring that habit, I had been turned on to Carlos Castaneda’s Teachings of Don Juan, and Erick van Daniken’s Chariots of the Gods, which in turn led me to go searching for a new book on the New Age one day, when i should have been searching for a job, and discovered one anyway that lasted for twelve years – working for Samuel Weiser, Inc. (which in turn led me to Philadelphia).
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