When the Red Barron (Manfred von Richthofen) parked his Triplane and picked up brushes he chose the simple stage name Richter to embark upon a duplicitous career as both realist and abstract painter. Long since discovered, he is now accepted as a major icon in the world of Doppelgangers.

Flying under the radar for several decades and adopting the simple ploy of employing my optional middle initial H, I’ve also managed to maintain a similar duality almost entirely undetected. That is until a week ago.  An abstract painting, returned from an Albright-Knox Museum traveling show was hung anonymously in an upscale New York gallery. It was noticed by an astute gallery go-er and subsequently identified as the work of John H Howard aka John Howard. My cover blown, I’m attempting a pre-emptive strike against the scandal and offering a full disclosure.  The painting can be seen during the duration of the Samuels/Brovelli/Glabicki show at Kim Foster 529 W 20 after which its future and my dual identity remain uncertain, in limbo.

The word seems to imply some scribbled momentary recording of the passing visual world. I prefer to keep notebooks. They do contain sketches and doodles but also accounts of transactions and payments for the privilege of experiencing this brief visit. Breezing through some of these countless volumes they seem to be charting the directionless meanderings of some clueless explorer who keeps these logbooks more for remembering a way back than discovering a way forward. A lifeline to a more comfortable place and time. That the possibility that most of this stuff is of little interest to anyone else has not escaped me. I’m not holding my breath but I’m hoping that pasting a few pages here might at least help me define a little more clearly, what I’ve been doing and which way I’ll be going. In the meantime, I’m sticking the tail on donkey#09 and have selected for family viewing ten of the  more palatable pages over there on the gallery list.

Hey, you never know – A dinky editorial job for the op-ed page of Crains NY Business Weekly became a 182 illustration three year run. It just finished. When I get an email from the editor saying he had a regular spot on NPR and was off to run a program at CUNY the writing was on the wall. He’d found a new job and I’d lost my old one. Well it was fun while it lasted, and I’ll miss AD Steve Krupinski’s regular response to my sketches – “ number 1/2/3/4/ ‘s the winner!” and the downhill race to meet another Thursday deadline.

Toaster oven sculpture with music may seem a career move long shot, but getting a little more mileage out of my long winded monologue, Casa de Fido and bringing closure to this epic failed fantasy are high stakes. With a creative endeavour of such high aspirations the chance that my synaptic pathways could intersect, throw my primary systems offline and leave me in some kind of dimensional distortion is an obvious risk but at this level, unavoidable.

Warning – Sorry, Germans can’t see this owing to my music copyright infringement.