I am down to the last two weeks of completing my goal on this project with twelve more posts to write. I have had a weekend to wind down after a terrible last week of trying to get things done before the years end and it gave me a chance to reflect back over what I have actually accomplished over the course of this year and I now see how truly impressive it has been. To be a lowly cowboy from Montana, to shoot creative artistic images of nude to near naked men, to expose myself, thoughts, ideas, dreams for others to share and to make my own dream come true has been quite an undertaking and I will end this year contented. A friend of mine in Tucson AZ was at a bar the other night where they had a series of erotic images being displayed and recognized my work amongst them and he texted me with excitement. I also was recently friended on Facebook by the painter, artist Wes Hempel who’s work I have adored for years. I sent him a note “We have the same birthday and I have to say it is an honor that you have requested me as a friend. I saw your work in a New York Gallery many years back and I was utterly spellbound by the healthy mystic quality you bring to gay culture. It is filled with love, compassion, acceptance something I have always striven to build within my own community but I am afraid have not been very successful at. You sir, are an inspiration to me and my method of working. Thank you very much.” To which he replied “Thank you, Terry, for such a beautiful note. Perhaps I’m drawn to your work for similar reasons, i.e., that it invites me, albeit initially via my interest in the erotic, into deeper questions and feelings. There’s so much of the person in your photographs, a real human presence. Often, it surprises me. I wonder, how did he do that? Talk about a healthy mystic quality. I’m honored that we share not only a birthday but a mutual sense of inspiration.” This was a moment of reckoning for me as I realized I had reached to real goal I had set for myself from the beginning. To become a recognizable artist amongst my peers and others I have often followed and tried to emulate. My creative life began looking at others works so very long ago and a dream born within myself to express the vastness of my own experience through this time. I was never quite sure of the path or where this year would lead. I always knew a website was essential and now we have given birth to something wondrous that I can grow into in the upcoming years. The remarkable has availed itself and I now have a platform to communicate with the world and best of all other artist, who have been thought this process or are about the discover within themselves how remarkable their gifts can become if they face their own personal demons and merely show up to that creative table. My advice USE EVERYTHING YOU KNOW and look within yourself for the answers. The expression of art is the culmination of what we have felt and experienced, all of it. Last week I fretted because the year had become a fiscal disaster, to devote so much time, resources and money on one thing without any kind of return but this week I see I have grown well beyond a reward that money cannot buy, respect!

I wanted to open the last week or so to others who have shared this exploration with me. Are there any questions you needed answered, areas that have not be covered, or things you might want to know? Things you think I am missed? Please send me a note and they can become topics. For it is the viewer who becomes the final collaborator in the creation of any artistic endeavor!