(ABOVE) 17th Century Bridge by Carroll is in a signed/dated hand carved, gold leafed frame by D. Fco. Alcaraz just like those Alcaraz made to showcase Old Masters paintings at Le Louvre, El Prado, Versailles, NYC's Met, the Picasso Museum, kings and queens, moguls, etc. Alcaraz carved frames for two of Carroll's 1994 paintings. The 17th Century Bridge was donated to the National Medal of Honor Museum Foundation as a "kicker" to land a $35 million dollar donation. "I don't know what happened". The 17th Century Bridge is framed like Perfectly Loved (See Carroll's HOME PAGE) EXCEPT Alcaraz saw no reason to make corrections to Carroll's Perfectly Loved --- Alcaraz declared, 'Esta perfecto!' Praise indeed from a man who restored Rembrandt, shared a flat on Montmartre with and did two-man art exhibits with Picasso.
Have your ADC pick up your paintings at
McKinney National Airport (KTKI).
โ TEXT 214-799-3125 (EFT)
"I personally respond to a Maverick's ENQUERY".
(THE BLUE POCKETKNIFE STORY)
DIARY p.1, Spain, July 4th 1994. "That first step was SEVEN stories long. I leaned backwards 'til I was airborne with a seasoned chief pilot in control.
"Seven bungee jumps sealed the deal. I looked outward to my life changing goals at the far corner of the cushion below. Retreat with my tail between my legs and go back down the tower? No. I jumped off the bungee tower - 7 stories, 7x's.
"At the DFW Airport I was advised to cash a traveler's check for pesetas before departure - As I stood in the queue, I realized my checks and passport were in my zippered travel pouch beneath my belt and tucked-in shirt, above my butt. A young Highland Park lady saw me in seat 22A as she came down the aisle looking for her 22B seat. She halted and blurted, 'Oh no, it's you.' In the airport exchange queue, she'd giggled her fingers into my pants to grab my (Gasp) --- I was the prince in a romance novel.
"Anyway, I'd marveled at our star spangled send off with fireworks shooting toward us from diamonds on a necklace from Dallas to Philly. I had a spectacular relaxed view at 33,000 feet.
July 5th 1994
"British Air touched down in Madrid at sunrise. I deplaned with my backpack, day pack, paints, brushes, and 10 quartered sheets of watercolor paper and was greeted with my teacher's pair of welcoming cheek kisses and an 'abrazo.' So, off to the bus terminal we scurried, led by 'Paco' (Don Francisco Alcaraz), as I knew him, and his aristocratic Brazilian lady friend. Our stops were unplanned along a few hours of highway lined with armed, military green clad, Guardias Civiles.
"The red hillsides reminded me of my bicycle racing days in Georgia. The high of 7 bungee jumps a few days before waxed and waned as my adventure really took off. I did not view art as a career choice at any previous time, nor did I in Spain. It was a thrill. You know, just drop everything and go. Art? I'd been a freshwater biologist, with strong focus on systems, order, and innovative thinking.
"Boy Howdy. At 9:30 AM the bus snorted to a stop, burped once or twice, and my feet scuffed down shiny metal steps onto the hard red clay in my 6-ounce racing flats. Oh boy! Or, 'Boy howdy' as I had learned to say in Texas (We'd said, 'Sheesh' in Pennsylvanian).
"Saldaรฑa de Ayllรณn is a small, ancient village of 30-33 permanent residents in the foothills of a ski resort. They're craftsmen, gardeners, and sheepherders - I grew up on the outskirts of a country town of less than 200 people, 28 miles from Philly - But, we had a stop sign 'downtown' by the mineral springs, AND, we had a post office!
"Why make it easy to learn something new? Paco didn't speak English. I'd taken beginner Art in 7th grade, Art Appreciation in 11th grade, and I didn't know diddly about my teacher. My last Spanish class was 22 years before. I was prepared!?!
"His Brazilian friend said Paco was an orphan at seven and at nine was the youngest in hundreds of years to be admitted to a prestigious art school. I was half listening. She added that he had labored diligently on his first assignment for two weeks to win the applause of his esteemed teacher. When Paco presented his 'gem' to the great man it exploded into the air and crashed into the hungry flames of the atelier fireplace. His teacher knew the genius of his student and flung his work into the dancing fire, demanding his best --- not effort. His very best. That was his glad to have ya here story?
"We walked into Saldaรฑa de Ayllรณn on a dirt road past Medieval mud adobes and skirted a cathedral on Calle Alcaraz. At 10:00 AM my first painting lesson began. 'He wants you to watch him and do what he does,' his aristocratic friend (England-schooled and fluent in 5 languages) told me. My first painting (#1, I intentionally mislabeled #3 on the back) was of Paco's favorite landscape, the very reason why he bought that Medieval shepherd's adobe in the foothills of a ski resort ... However, it was 105ยฐ F and I was hung over by a bad case of jet lag.
"Each day the temperature swung from 3.9ยฐC (39ยฐ F) at night to a hellish Death Valley 45ยฐC (113ยฐ F) by day. I slept on a rickety, swaybacked ol' sofa with tired springs in the old sub-abode sheep barn with an old Dutch door entry at its head and a screened open window at its feet. Supper was at midnight. Painting began at 6 AM, seven days/week.
"I struggled with sketching perspective, then cautiously, carefully, meticulously painted using ochre, cerulean blue, sap and viridian green - Hey, that's what I had on my paint tray ... And she said, 'He wants me to tell you that there are more than two colors of green, and to stand at the balcony looking down at that sapling until you tell him how many colors of green you see.' After 20 minutes, to end the miasma I blurted 'at least 1,000.' Paco was satisfied and I dodged another minute of blurry pain. FYI. Ten years before I was walking down Ben Franklin Parkway in Philly right after someone pointed out that I hadn't killed my older sister, which I'd blamed myself for, but hadn't anything to do with it. On that Philly day I felt the warmth of the sun, realized trees are green and the sky was blue for the first time. Wow!!! And there I was in Spain with no idea what a color wheel is.
"No man was ever wise by chance".
- Seneca (4 BC-65 AD)
THE BLUE POCKETKNIFE:
"Paco beckoned with short, rugged, swollen carver's hands, clutching my pretty landscape. The lady's thick Brazilian accent intoned, 'He wants you to follow him.' I did. In his workshop/atelier I felt the crisp slap of a cold, aged, metal ruler on the face of my first masterpiece. His unfolded blue pocketknife surgically bisected my painting in one short, quick stroke. He pivoted in the doorway and returned to finish an oleo on the balcony. And, his lady friend said, 'He wants you to know you have two paintings. Go fix them.' I didn't know the summer sun could be so hot. I buried the smaller piece in a waste basket, thinking he wouldn't ask about it. He asked the next morning. I didn't retrieve it but kept the larger part and re-signed it a second time, as you might imagine.
"One night after dinner, so at about midnight, Paco opened a book of his friend Picasso's stains and traced the brushwork with his fingers as he demonstrated how the icon made them. Alcaraz hadn't read about it in a book. He'd actually been there, with Picasso. It was an experience had by a very small cadre of artists. My teacher lived an important part of art history. Teary-eyed I thought perhaps 2 or 3 artists in the last 600 years had such an opportunity. Wow!!!
"I FLEW BACK TO DALLAS August 23rd, 1994, ... Let's jump to the end. Paco, his aristocrat lady friend, and I stood together as the oily, black exhaust of a creaking bus swept past the highway sign. As I climbed the shiny balding steps, the lady said, 'An artist is born' and like a proud papa Paco handed me his blue pocketknife. From my starboard window I saw he was crying.
"Believe you can and you're halfway there".
- Theodore Roosevelt
"THAT'S A KNIFE" (Paul Hogan, Crocodile Dundee)
"I climbed the bungee tower at Walnut Hill thrice more, blindfolded at the bottom, as an end zone dance after I got back to Dallas, Texas. Tens of thousands of people were curious to know more about my adventures. So, I told a small part of the story".
"My wish is to stay always like this, living quietly in a corner of nature".
- Claude Monet, Nymphรฉas (Waterlilies), founder of Impressionism
- - - - - - -
Reflecting, almost 32 years later: (07.2025)
Water Color requires fluid thought, like water around a boulder and life outside the raft.
"One night back in Texas, after a few beers, annoyed, I quickly jotted a Letter to the Editor of Watercolor Magic (F+W Media) in response to previous artist comments spouting how WCs are difficult and unforgiving and fired it off. My terse letter told how I paint and disputed the difficulty - The next month, the Nov-Dec issue, they published my words along with my Guardian Angel watercolor. While in Spain, Alcaraz had scrubbed one of my paintings under a gushing faucet with a fingernail brush, handed it to me and ordered, 'Go fix it.' I did".
"My South Dakota Phi Beta Kappa mom taught Pediatrics at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), U. of Pennsylvania and was Dr. Bill Nelson's 1st editor of North American Pediatrics. Her doctor dad died of Leukemia during the Dakota Dustbowl and first year of the Stock Market Crash; The consequences were devastating but set the stage for her to become a doctor. My doctor dad was director of Skin and Cancer Hospital, taught at Temple Medical School, and had a huge derm practice; The family that built the Brooklyn Bridge built a specialty hospital for him. He made it #1 in the world. The best and brightest came from all over the world to study under him, work for him, to be treated by him, or refer patients to him. He had been a USN LTJG doctor in the Third Tide on Dog Green, Omaha Beach, D-Day, then chief medical officer on APD-78 (USS Bull) in the Philippines, and at Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Poppy loved restoring antique homes. They founded Fox Hollow Farms Equestrian Center, first headed by Kiwi Olympic Champion Lockie Richards, FBHS, then Jeremy Beale, a Burghley Winner and British Olympic Three-Day Eventing team member, U.S. Dressage Federation Gold Medalist, Jeremy Beale. Their estate was put in the township's first land conservancy, and part was sold by Christie's to benefit Indigenous peoples in South Dakota. Both had battle scars. Both were Mavericks.
"My childhood buddy was a veterinarian's son until we moved to a Chester Springs an hour away; He matriculated with M.I.T. (Optical Physics) at age ten. I mucked 60 stalls, mended fences, built stone walls, mowed hay fields with a Farmall Super H, painted everything in sight, and played in West Branch of Pigeon Run, the pastures, and the woods. I'm just a country farm boy at heart.
"I had to take tennis lessons since I was knee-high to a tennis racket and played Varsity doubles. Naturally, I fell in love with sprint bike racing, backpacking, then fast running, then marathons, then power walking, and then walking."
A tributary to Pigeon Run, a woodland spring fed the historic 1751 fieldstone home, swimming pool, kitchen garden, stone bank barn, carriage shed, tenant house, poultry, etc. A rear admiral (Upper) taught him to tie knots in front of their dining room fireplace. Carroll visited Frank Lloyd Wright's Falling Waters cantilevered over Bear Run stream, and dined with Punk Carter, multi-National and World Champion cutting horse master horseman. Nevertheless, he lives simply.
Few artists have such intellectual and richly extraordinary experiences.
"Medicine is not only a science; it is also an art. It does not consist of compounding pills and plasters; it deals with the very processes of life, which must be understood before they may be guided".
- Paracelsus (1493-1541)
"Go ask Alice / When she's ten feet tall ...".
- Jefferson Airplane (White Rabbit, 1967)
HE SOFTLY LAUGHS.
"I'M SETTLED and didn't burn all my matches before crossing the finish line. I enjoy frequent 'spring' rain, Ponderosa pines, quaking aspen, green ash, Rocky Mountain junipers, grazing in a research library, and youthful fitness. A small cottage and tight community, walking, forest bathing ๆฃฎๆๆตด, snow by the cubic foot, sub-zero winter winds, solitude, few people for miles, plentiful wildlife, and pristine natural beauty. Rocky Mountain High (John Denver, 1972). "In every walk with Nature one receives far more than he seeks." (John Muir). William O. Douglas, Justice of the United States Supreme Court, "It broke water, stood on its tail, and shook its head ..." (Page 175, Of Men and Mountains, 1950). I enjoy nicely made things."
SAFETY & TRUST.
"I daily court a lovely, PR31, desirable high prairie gal with 100% shared values and mutual trust and respect, an angelic voice, a high IQ/EQ, and unafraid to shovel mountains of snow, put on tire chains and drive in a snowfall. She is a svelte former competitive athlete". 0718
Carroll no longer believes himself a stupid, worthless, bastard, and cursed, as his dad called him. He was disinherited. His water and electricity were cut off, he slept in his car, lived in a homeless shelter and worked at a Sam's Club. The Burgoons were in few ways perfect but were authentic. Today, the artist is free of oppression and its glass ceiling. Carroll is thriving joyfully.
"Sometimes people say,' One day you are going to look back at this and laugh.' My question is:' Why wait"?
- Richard Bandler, founder Neuro-linguistic Programming
ABOVE: Following the Cloud, north Texas cowboy cutting an Angus cow and her calf.
LEFT: "YES Sir, I'm the guy with the beard and long hair --- But, you could bounce a quarter on my bunk at sunrise! I cleaned up pretty well. Well, pretty well. My attitude is clean shaven and my mop of hair trimmed".
Richard L. Proenneke wrote, "To look around at what you have accomplished in a day gives a man a good feeling. Too many men work on parts of things. Doing a job to completeness satisfies a man". and "Eight and a half miles can be covered in minutes in a car on an expressway, but what does a man see? What he gains in time he loses in benefit to his body and mInd". and "There is always a sadness about packing. I guess you wonder if where you're going is as good as where you've been". and "When the time comes for a man to look his Maker in the eye, where better could the meeting be held than in the wilderness"? One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey.
SEE: www.nps.gov/lacl/learn/historyculture/richard-l-proenneke.htm
Carroll matriculated in the Junior Curator's Club at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia as a 5-year-old, when he was collecting insects and making Riker mounts; He had a compound microscope and chemistry set and a passion for nature walks, bike riding, and a no nonsense yet, lavish, nattily kept lifestyle. His Sigma Xi sponsored Honors Thesis came out of his flooding the offices of all of the Bio professor's offices. He did not satisfy his college's or the Biology Department's required courses. Meanwhile, the Academy of Natural Sciences paid him the equivalent of $250 an hour (2025 money) to do pollution sensitive aquatic insect IDs for environmental impact studies. YES, Carroll graduated with his Class.
He received a Swiss Wild Heerbrugg M5 Stereo Microscope as an early graduation present at Stroud Water Research Center where he worked, Stroud is the preeminent think tank studying river ecosystems, founded in 1967. He chose his college based on the portraits of Nobel Laureates lining the corridors of Nobel Hall at Gustavus Adolphus College. Carroll was a microbio lab tech on C-14 studies of leaf decomposition in a 2nd order Piedmont stream and an aquatic insect taxonomist with Jay Richardson on EPA environmental surveys of insect species, because of their high sensitivity to water pollution. Stroud was Carroll's first job as a college junior and afterward.
"Don't ask if you want an elevator speech. Won't happen. I invested in drawing dissected insect anatomy, where highly detailed accuracy was essential. DYK, 4X0 pens fit naturally in one hand with a beer in this introverted science graduate student's other on Friday nights." They're in the slideshow ART GALLERY on page one of this Website.
I was recommended to DuPont by Jay (We did a 24-hour drift study and Dr. Patrick flew down to dine with us. --- I still remember bending a lemon peel over the table candle to flame the phenolics for her delight. DuPont offered to pay for my doctoral studies at UGA if I accepted their offer of a job at their Savannah River National Laboratory; I declined. Instead, I did Master's studies at UGA w/o GREs, saw Dooley's Dogs pound 'Bama in Sanford Stadium and, left to work at ANSP. before finishing. I loved Dr. Hermann's Insect Physiology and Dr. Herbert Ross's Systematic Ecology."
"My second 1040 job was Principal Investigator for BP, P&G, Scott Paper, Washington, D.C.'s water and utilities as a staffer in Limnology and Ecology at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (ANSP). Founded in 1812 by businessmen, clergy, scientists, and high society, it's the Western Hemisphere's oldest natural history museum --- Today, ANSP is Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexell University . "Harvard PhD, Invertebrate Section Leader, Limnology and Ecology, Samuel LH Fuller, at the Academy of Natural Sciences hired me over a few brews in the backyard of a hole-in-the-wall Philly restaurant. I told him I wouldn't continue any approved methodologies his former Principal Investigators employed. I replaced the two gentlemen leaving for U Penn grad school. Sam gave me his complete support. I was paid for 35 hrs/wk but worked 90 to 140 hrs. to make every deadline doing projects to my satisfaction.
"The head librarian, Janet Evans, let me thumb through Carl Linnaeus' 1st Ed of Systema Naturae (1758). From a Japanese butterfly publication, I saw how to identify instars 1 to 5 and pupae of juvenile Hydropsychids to species, when the state of the art could only identify 5% of aquatic field collections to species, and taught the new methodology to inner city youth - I find good ideas just poking around and connecting the dots thinking objectively, strategically".
"Now there are four chief obstacles in grasping truth, which hinder every man, however learned, and scarcely allow anyone to win a clear title to learning, namely, submission to faulty and unworthy authority, influence of custom, popular prejudice, and concealment of our own ignorance accompanied by an ostentatious display of our knowledge". -"Doctor Mirabilis" Rogerius Baconus OFM, the four Causes of Error explicated in his Opus Majus, estimated IQ 180 to 197. This quote with a watercolor wash of Roger Bacon from a 1961 Scientific American magazine was tacked above Carroll's desk from the elementary 4th-grade through college. He inculcated the message.
"Like people, trees are all individuals".
- David Hockney
FOUR SEASONS
Carroll studied trees in winter to paint them in spring, summer, autumn, and winter - All species have distinctive branching and bark. The leaves (Patterns, arrangement, margins and venation) came later. Trees are not a stick with a ball on top. All trees are individually recognizable with common characteristics. Listen to Vivaldi's The Four Seasons. Light, lines, depth, and perspective are compositional aspects. You can hear the flitting butterflies and the blooming of flowers. Then, trees can be sticks with balls on top in mathematical rhythm and harmony. Every timeless master artist first leaned mastery of the basics: Observation, drawing, and composition without shortcuts. That is, in part, how to paint like a bird sings.
Nevertheless, only chicken shxt artists stylize the eyes. The eyes reveal a deep Truth that cannot be avoided by using shorthand. Carroll paints the eyes last risking the entire painting. Thus, it remains a mystery what he does. Carroll is a rare, walking, breathing anomaly you can see clearly with perfect vision.
"One way to open your eyes is to ask yourself,
"What if I had never seen this before?
What if I knew I would never see it again"?
- Rachel Carson