Ray Smith and I share many things, and are different in many ways, but at the core of our friendship is the idea that we are both fighting to live our lives, and that is a precious bond, and a joy to both of us. Neither of us are strangers to struggle, loss and challenge, but a meaningful life is not necessarily a happy one, or one without pain. A meaningful life is a search for the joy of existence, and the meaning we find in our lives every day. Seeing Ray fall in love with his painting, and this shows strikingly in his work, resonates with me more than even he might now.
  This is the passion I feel for my life, my writing, my photography, my farm. I have many failures and disappointments, like everyone else, but there is a profound joy in creation, and it transcends markets and IRA’s, and the battering that ls inherent in life. Ray sees past this, and his work sees past it, and that is an important idea to me.
 It is strange for one artist to portray another’s work, but charging around his studio with my camera, switching lenses, I had the wonderful sense of seeing something powerful everywhere the lens went. What a nice moment. This was from a sky, and it was in itself a statement, a photograph.