"The earth revolves beneath my feet.
The sun circles over my head.
Star-light shines in my eye.
My heart is full."   -Roberto Quintana

Some of my earliest memories are of the pungent smell of eucalyptus trees in the dry river-washes of the Coachella Valley, and the loud, incessant, electric-buzzing of the locusts' humming... thick in the hot, still, aromatic-air... the relentless heat of the afternoon sun rising like shimmering waves off the red and ochre earth and the sage-scorched dunes. I can remember the blanched-yellow sky of noon with the fire-ants scrambling for cover. I remember the blazing red, magenta-orange light of the sunsets; the purple-grey-green skies of dusk, with the coyotes calling in the dark-blue hills; and I can recall the silver-indigo cloak of night reaching out beyond the Milky Way, with the echo of a train's whistle floating far-off across the lonely, timeless dream of night.

My father's people were Basque, Spanish, and Apache-- Mestizo ranchers, farmers, and miners living close to the earth in the central Chihuahua desert, under big skies with vast horizons.

My mother's people were Scotch, Irish, and English-- Anglo farmers, ranchers, and merchants. Settlers from the east, they immigrated in covered-wagons, across the great-plains of the western prairies and settled in the California desert of sage-mountains and salt-lakes.

My people are the people of the earth: Latino, Native, and Anglo; the dispossessed: Basque and Irish immigrants. The bold and restless: Scottish and Spanish explorers. I am the roots of two great continents, I am the savage and the orphaned child, I am the conqueror searching for my lost soul, and the conquered rising from the ashes in radiance, hope, and joy...

"Throughout these many years of craft building, I have always returned to the landscape-painting for renewal and rest. As my artistic sensitivity matures, I have come to realize that the contours of the figure-study, the light in the still-life arrangement, and the textures in an abstract-composition are all echoes of the landscape: coyotes calling in the dark-blue hills." -RQ