The Master Plan

The business plan was first written in 1949. The goals were clearly identified:

I wanted to be a painter and I wanted to get rich. Now how is that for simplicity? On to execute the plan. As I had been requested to remove myself from high school in my senior year, I went on to the Art Institute of Chicago. Surprise! There again I was requested to remove myself. The wise men of the time had not yet developed the term "Attention Deficit." The popular term of the day was "There goes a Bad Kid." When it becomes obvious that a plan is going nowhere, the smart ones re–assess and re–design. The rest of us – "The Survivors" – rely on luck and evolution.

From errand boy to truck driver, to clerk, to salesman, to manager, to entrepreneur – but always with the assistance of my painter friends. The coaching and teaching of Ben Stahl, Sessions, Haddon Sunbloom, and today the friendship of such greats as Ramon Kelley, Burt Silverman, Daniel Greene, Ray Kinstler, Jack Pardue, Kate Palmer, Robert Tanenbaum, Steve Quiller, Zoltan Szabo, Buffalo Kaplinski, Skip Whitcomb, Chris Van Winkle, Tom Fong and the list goes on forever. I’d need pages to list them all. It was all of them who coached, prodded and wrote the plan. It was all of them who gathered my family together and seduced them into the wonderful world of art – from the stock stored in the attic to the monster building that now houses our fantasies.