Danton

the artist

Danton: Walks into the dew of the morning and celebrates another day. Lives with a Ukainian mistress who speaks no English but plays Chopin divinely. At one time, in his youth he was boisterous and a partyer who drank raw whiskey by the gallon and dated women only of exquisite beauty... Until he met Ludmilla who, as a dancer for the Kiev Ballet entranced him completely with her swift moves and high kicks which he discovered went with an extroadanary appitite for living. For years, after she'd escaped from the USSR they travelled ignognito throughout the world, living off his earnings making ceramic flutes and finally... they passed into the mystery of love, niether speaking the others language... but caught in the beauty of a universe that is ever changing ever in flux. Danton, paints now only for her, and she dances only for him... and they live in a small cabin in the foothills of Washington's Olympic mountains where in the mornings when she's done milking the goats... she comes to him, who stopping from chopping firewood, laughs at the coming storm and takes her in his arms and the pail falls to earth spilling the warm milk among the clover.

the art

Completely original, coming from the heart... understood by the few... drifting colors that caress the sky moving out of the lingering trees, blazing sunrises igniting the dew on a peach... the soft downy skin of the milkmaid laughing softly at the young intruder... a flurry of words on paper, with sketches, speaking so eloquently of the death of a friend murdered in Ketchikan in a bar room fight... the moment, of the wolf cub's first kill.

the beret

Sometimes he wears a fedora, but most the time his hair runs wild and free unrestricted confines of bondage.

Submitted by Mike Strom (skylite@olympus.net), on Sunday, June 2, 1996, from irondale, WA