[Garth Herrick]

Dear Leslie,

Hi neighbor! Thank you very much.

These three paintings were not commissions, so yes, I felt freer to be experimental, and these are not my children. I have a daughter and I need to paint her again, hopefully soon.

Painting 1's reference photo goes back 23 years. I have always been drawn to the play of light in this image, and I am currently working on a new interpretation of this image for a show next month. I am not sure about the strange cut-out shapes anymore, so this time its a rectangle.

Painting 2 depicts very distant 10th cousins living in remote hills bordering Kentucky and Tennessee; in fact they don't know which state they live in! The house seems to straddle the border. I shot the reference in 1991 as a stereo set of slides, and then constructed a stereo slide viewer to work from.

Painting 3 was a neighbor 23 years ago who actually hid after knocking at the door, and I made him re-stage this for a photo reference.

Note: The 3 paintings are now in a different order than in Leslie's quote below. This is because I fixed the color saturation and reloaded them.

Garth