Swampie's Profile

From: Eustis, FL
Joined: November 05, 2011

About Swampie:

If you see something here you want to know more about or would be interested in commissioning some glass work let me know and I'll be glad to consider it. Much depends on the price and what is expected meaning the photo or person. I work from photos and a stained glass portrait requires just the right photo to work with, trying to make something work that you know won't is something this man no longer cares to attempt anymore.

And stained glass work requires a 20% non refundable down payment, that covers the materials. It could be less each project will differ.

I am not a well traveled sixty-one year old man. Was in the Army from 1974-1977 and went to Korea. Couldn't wait to get out of the Army, Korea was awesome a real eye opener.

My grow'n up years left me yearning to go back to that safe wonderful place the rest of my life. Later earning a degree in psychology I found out this is a natural feeling.

I was raised in named two-story old Florida home "12 Oaks". There were 12 magnificent Live Oak trees in my front yard and as my farther used to say we had the largest Camphor tree in Central Florida to the Southwest side of our home, I measured it once, it was 28-feet around the trunk that rose five feet off the ground where several huge limbs spread out. Our home way back then didn't have air conditioning and never really needed it, it was off the ground surrounded by three porches and had an attic fan so powerful that it seemed like the home would launch off the ground each day my mom and I came home and turned it on.

It was something and so was my family. My mom and dad were depression era people where everything they did was for their family. They loved their children unconditionally. Now there was a lot of fussing here and there what family doesn't have it, I was the youngest which meant my life was sheltered I had the protection of my older brothers. Always thought my sister was kind of goofy, she ended up the rich one in the family.

Anyway it was a safe loving atmosphere to grow up in, there were times when we had things happen like my fathers heart attack that almost killed him, or mom's breast cancer. My one brother had polio and the other a rheumatic heart, my sister had lupus. Me I had nothing other than an injury waiting to happen, one after the other I ended up logging more hospital time than all of them.

We always had a dog, a German Sheppard name Napoleon and a Collie named Lassie she was as sweet as they come. On a thanksgiving day one year a Terrier walked into our yard, he was named Henry and lived with our family a long time.

Since then I've had two passions trees and large dogs, settling on Mastiffs.

Was married to a beautiful gal, she was much better than I deserved. Smart, one of the easiest persons to talk to I ever met. She'd meet people I knew for 25 years, talk to them for five minutes and know more about them than I ever did. She was one in a million, we divorced I'm the only person in my family to get one.

Have always loved drawing. When I was in the first grade the teacher had us draw pictures think for Veteran's Day I drew soldiers saluting the flag, four fingers and a thumb on each had with fingernails, dressed up in their best with military officer style hats, it blew my teacher Bleeker Wilkerson away. LOL She was a flamboyant gal who was easily set into a gasping wild tizzy.

Really liked sports, loved playing chess so there were many other things I did besides art. High school football, a little college baseball, golf, bowling were my passions, that and the gals.

But from time to time I always went back to art, never trying to perfect anything always wanting to try something new. If I did a few things I felt were good I moved on, the stained glass was something I hit really hard for a while but twenty years ago it just wasn't very easy for a kid in a rural county near Orlando, Florida, to know how to market things.

Funny that I hated English in high school, I loved math and sciences and was really strong in math, used to play chess games blindfolded. But when I got older I had a passion to write.

So I wrote.

Ended up working as sports writer, actually the blogger level for several years worked for a state wide sports company for seven years, started as a volunteer for a news paper, spent some years with fan sites money continued to be less and less my interests really went down on recruiting a thing that fueled that particular business which lessened my value. Too many people calling these kids.

Just by reading this you'll see that I wasn't a great writer, never said I did, I said I was a sports writer, that should explain my writing skills...

I was a stone mason with my dad for 18 years. Man did we have some great times. We ran into the oddest weather, he and I saw four different tornadoes over those years. Once we had to pull over because golf ball sized hail was raining down, never saw anything like that since. We were beside a lake and it looked like a huge washing machine, carpeted with either water splashing up or depressing from the initial hit of the large hail stones something you have to see.

My dad and I had our own jobs as subcontractors often we helped each other out.

Best thing about working with my father was the relationship we formed. For some reason I was in competition, I think with my mother. I was such a little jerk, but all that changed when I grew up. I saw how smart the man was, like that Mark Twain saying...

"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."

It was amazing, I never imagined I'd love my father so much, he was a great man, he was my hero. God did I end up loving him and I loved my mom just a little bit more. A person who has great parents is blessed.

Back to some kind of time line, I went back to college when I was 42, had an AA degree I got a few years out of high school, ended up got a degree in psychology. I was divorced then, that knocked me off my feet for several years.

I had become a spiritual man when I met my wife, not religious. I see nothing but love and good things in all religions, although there is much fear and misunderstanding that often goes with a horrible misuse of religions by radical groups. I love the spirit of man it is driven by things I will never understand nor do I try too I just lump them into the spiritual world.

I like trying to capture a moment, a personal moment where if successful my work and the observer will make a connection, if only for a moment then that work was successful.

Art to me is the purest form of communication.