I produced no gallery show for 8 years while I pursued the holiest of missions: the restoration of the Landes House of Galveston. For years and years I had wanted the house, a monument to a gilded age, it sat like a sleeping jewel, shutters closed up tight from the outside world.  The reclusive widow that lived there let no one in! Finally, after years of attempts, she was ready. Her husband had loved the house as I did, but died before any real restoration could take place.  After his death, the blinds were drawn.  Various people had tried to buy the house and were promptly thrown out.  I was lucky. I connected with her.  I too, like her late husband was a decorator, a dealer of antiques.  For several nights we sat and talked.... chain smoking Camels and swilling scotch.  At last, the deal was done and the house was mine.

The 1900 storm had taken its toll on the house, as it had on the islands' other proud mansions, but it was built like a fortress, tons of pressed brick and terra-cottamarble, iron.... Who knew what lay beyond the massive storm doors that had been shut tight for years?  As it turned out, behind them were front doors of Tiffany glass, painted and fired vases of lilies, in a design exemplary of the aesthetic period.  This was the first glimpse in the journey into the dark hall, the beautiful cherry woodwork, inlaid floors, jeweled glass transoms.  Whatever painting had been on the walls, ceilings, mouldingsand brackets had long since been obliterated, scrapped down and replastered, patched, and poorly patched, and finally painted a ghastly, chalky white.  There was nothing left of what had been there... no records, no photos, no old journals.  I was left to my own device to decide what would have been there, should have been there.  If the damage from the 1900 storm had not been enough, a renovation by a second owner in 1913 obliterated the last trace of the original decorations of the walls and ceilings.  The only interior photographs were of the period after 1913, and these, though valuable, could not show what had been there when the house was built in 1887.  To guide me, I had only the minutest trace of a terra-cotta color, but nothing else.  No piece of painted ornament that surely had been there was left.  If I had found it, under a layer of paint, in an old photograph, old journal, any record at all, I would have been obligated to reproduce it, but as it was, my task was to do justice to this exuberant and fine example of the Eastlake, Renaissance Revival, and Aesthetic movement.  There was no way this house would suffer the fate of some silly housewife with ducks and bows as so many of the Victorian houses had.  No, this was a house where Sarah Bernhardt and Oscar Wilde might have sat and smoked opium and sipped absinthe. 

The first order of business was to restore every inch of the old plaster.  A Guatemalan plaster master spent six months on this project before I could lay down a single drop of paint.  I had to re-create 7 of the 13 original stained glass windows.  In those where one of a pair was gone, it was recreated exactly.  The ones with Tiffany jewels were recreated using modern jewels, cast from the original Tiffany molds.  Accuracy to a fault was a given.  Nowhere would I allow a hint of the 20th century to show that anything was not original.  I stepped back in time, to operate from the consciousness of the period. It was like the house were being decorated for the first time.  An Edwardian and aesthete and lotus eater by nature, I was perfectly suited for this most sacred of tasks placed in my hands.  I felt that the house loved me as much as I loved the house.  Night after night I sat, alone, staring at the walls, pondering the job before me. 

One day, I opened an old book I had forgotten about, a profusely illustrated book of Tennyson's remote poem, "The Daydream", amazingly, published the same year the house was built.  The poem is the story of sleeping beauty, about a prince who returns after 100 years to wake up the sleeping castle.  Then and there I knew that this was my theme for the entrance and stair hall. How significant it seemed to me, that I was the prince, chosen to wake up the sleeping castle.  I chose my favorite four lines from the poem to incorporate into the decorative painting.  A progression of lines from the poem, starting at the entrance and that continued up the stairs to the stair landing.  The fourth line of the poem I used in the large stained glass stair landingwindow.  No one knows what the original window looked like, only that it was of stained glass.  The storm had taken it out in 1900 and in its place was put a horrible piece from 1913 that had nothing to do with the house, the style or period of the house at all.  I made every effort to create a window that would have been here, and that tied to the theme of the hall.  I was on a scaffoldingwith a three hair brush for over a year, just on the entrance stair/hall.

For the small parloron the right, opening from huge pocket doors of cherry wood, I chose an Anglo-Japanese themewith bamboo and fans and insects. Again, on a scaffold with a three hair brush.  The dining roomcalled for much drama, an exuberant design that was as over the top as the house itself.  It could carry it.  I chose Orientalism, so popular of the time, a typical Victorian conglomeration of Egyptian, Turkish and Arabianmotifs.  The colors were taken directly from period colored lithographs, all the walls painted to resemble encaustic tile of an authentic Arabian design.  In the niche, I painted a street scene of Cairo, again, taken from a lithograph of a book of the period.  When the painting was done, I furnished the house in period antiques and art.  I went bankrupt doing it.  The dining room blackamoors cost more than my first three houses, but I had to have them. 

On these pages are some of the photographs of this job that took eight years of my life.  I consider it my best work.  These opportunities don't come along every day.  The job was done and the house was placed on the 1999 annual homes tour of the Galveston Historical Foundation, and 7000 people came through the house over two weekends.  The dining room was featured in the Oct/Nov Design Times magazine.  It was time to move on.  I sold it, and , and moved to Mexico for five years, on the Mexican Riviera, where I built two wonderful houses, "Konomi" and "Savasana".... a totally different experience from the strict, pure restoration of a Victorian jewel.  Now, I enjoy the freedom here.  My first house, "Savasana", was named for the yoga posture sometimes called the "corpse posture", but also known as "the last thing you do before you rest."  I thought it would be my last house. Of course, it wouldn't be.  Next, I built "Konomi", a Japanese term that means "original style", and original it is.  A blend of Mexican and Oriental motifs, and built by unskilled Mayan labor.... there was no historic  precedent to refer to here! 

I am now back in the states, and re-focused on my art, my nature retreat, and my passion for animal rights.  On this site are recent works, in watercolor, in mosaics, in eglomise and funerary art.  I hope you enjoy my work as much as I enjoy producing  it.