A Retrospective Look A Memoir - Hardcover

by Ronald L. Oliver (Author)

I am a product of the lower income working class. My father worked with machinery while my mother was a variety store clerk for most of her adult life. You could say that I was a poor boy, and my story has been told so many times before. I want to tell it one last time, because a lot of people don t pay attention. This collection looks back at the drawings and paintings done over a lifetime. It began with a hunger to draw that I first noticed and acted on when I was around twelve years old. This book represents a chance to put them altogether into a whole that traces my development over the years, and I hope it tells my story in full.

From the start, I have used drawing and painting as a of seeking truth. It allowed me to focus better on the world at hand and ignore everything else. By calling them ]artwork], they looked more lasting as I wanted them to remain and stay. I thought they could speak with my voice and say what I wanted to say.
It came natural to me from of an inner desire to get things right, to speak the truth. It seemed that there was a basic need to draw, paint, and express what was on the inside. I could organize and put things together on paper or canvas that went together in no other way, at no other time. It was a way entering the bigger world outside myself and I walked into that world eagerly.
I was first inspired by a glossy photo‐journal of the early sixties with photographs of Caroline Kennedy on top of a horse. When I later tried to ride a horse in imitation it ran to the middle of an interstate expressway and stopped in its tracks, frozen with fear. I loved horses until I learned they had a will of their own that was often greater than that of the rider. Regardless, they were often better on paper than in real life.
I started drawing with a pencil and charcoal but later graduated to oils paints, acrylics, pastels and finally watercolors. I always felt lost until I made it my own and was comfortable with it. I still search for a permanent beauty, a harmony that may not be there otherwise. It gives me a deep satisfaction when it comes out as I wanted it in the first place. It helps me to keep me away from telling scattered and pointless, disorganized stories. Art was good therapy then now. The process still works. I would encourage anyone with the smallest well of desire or need to jump in the water, to get wet. It feels good, and the water is fine.