Artists explore life through their passions. The game of baseball is one of my great passions. For a number of years I have used paint, brush, and palette knife to journey through the history, the light, and shadows of America’s great pastime. Old-time baseball players named Mordecai “Three Fingers” Brown, “Home Run” Baker, “Chief” Albert Bender, and Cool Papa Bell, have become my team mates as I struggle with thick layers of oil paint to once again put them back into play. Baseball is a very important thread that weaves its way through the complex tapestry which we call America. A small, tattered clipping that hangs on my studio wall sums up the reason why I am so passionate about this game. The words are from the book “Shoeless Joe” by author Ray Kinsella: “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by, like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. Baseball has marked the time. This field, this game, is a part of our past. It reminds us of all that once was good and could be again.”