Termite TV - Life Stories

Alright, I was born in Durban South Africa March 4th 1949, little one room brick house over looking the Indian Ocean I was the second eldest of eight children. I was also an illegitimate child, illegitimate child identical twin. Had a pretty normal life, most of my childhood, or as normal as anybody who has a family like mine could. My father when I was a little boy was an instructor at the Naval Academy he taught sailing, that’s where I got my interest in tying knots. Had a deep love of sailing and outdoors stuff. I grew up all over the world, uh been to 160 different countries. Uh, as a high school student, I was fairly average, but had a propensity to do all kinds of practical jokes. Like I went to high school, University High School, Normal Illinois for a Halloween prank me and a friend climbed up on top of the Normal water tower, and painted ab in front of Normal The next year we blew up the city land fill, and things went along pretty normal, got out of high school age 15, did the university thing for a couple years, then enlisted in the Navy. Navy uh, while I was, my second day at Great Lakes for basic training, they were looking for volunteers to go to the Navy Seals School, and they told us we’d get excused from boot camp so my hand was up quick. Plus it was wintertime in Great Lakes and freezing so I thought Cornuta, California sounded like a fun vacation. It was 29 weeks; that was pure unadulterated hell, and then I ended up going to Vietnam, which was a vacation in itself. Got to eat exotic foods, monkey brains out of live monkeys, snakes, snake blood, and worms, and grubs, and all kinds of interesting things. I’ve been shot a dozen times, stabbed a half dozen times, and blow up twice. I’ve also seen exotic parts of the world in the Navy, Afghanistan, Antarctica, did a sub, well I actually did two sub tours, and uh I always had an interest in photography and never considered that I was a classical artist, so I was just doing photographs. So they told me photography wasn’t an art, and I ended up saying to myself well what if I painted over my photographs. So I started on this other path, path, and I had this big love for impressionist art, so I have all the bright colors, and it just kinda colors over kind of a dark past, past and forget about all the blood. And uh, for the rest of my life I don’t know I think I still have a couple years left. Alright, well, I got out of the Navy in 1993 I had my Achilles tendon on my right ankle shredded, it was the most painful experience I’ve had in my life it hurt more than getting shot or stabbed or even blown up and after that, that ended my career in the Navy and also as a scuba diver cause I couldn’t pass the physical. Here I am an artist, I guess that’s what happens to all of us who pursue that adventurous life style we end up doing the unexpected.