Painting, "Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva" from Buddha series

I will no longer be actively marketing my art work, so I will not be sending you any sale announcements. The reason for this is that I have stepped into a more active role administering and marketing our Zen Life & Meditation Center of Chicago. So, it now feels like a conflict of interest to be marketing my art work along side the Zen Center's programs. So if I have to choose, it will always be the dharma and my sangha community. 

But all is not lost. Now I am free to really say what I want to say, and usually that's going to have something to do with the dharma, wisdom or compassion. So here is a new post for your reading pleasure. This is a koan from the Book of Equanimity. This is a book of koans my Zen students take up and study with me when they are fairly far along in their Zen training. 

Ungan asked Dogo, "What does the Bodhisattva of great compassion use so many hands and eyes for?"

Dogo said, "It's like someone reaching back for a pillow in the night."

Ungan said, "I understand."

Dogo said, "How do you understand?"

Ungan said, "All over the body are hands and eyes."

Dogo said, "You've said quite a bit, but you've only expressed 80%."

Ungan said, "What about you?"

Dogo said, "Throughout the body are hands and eyes."

There are many ways a Zen student could work on this koan. First of all, one can appreciate this beautiful image of compassion being as normal and ordinary as simply reaching back for your pillow in the night. We go to sleep every night and our dreams seem as real as our waking reality. Which is real? If we are responsible for our waking behavior, are we not also responsible for our dreams? 

Another meditation that comes up for me around this koan is to remember all the many loving hands that have touched and held me. And when I think of this, it breaks my heart open. This sad and tender heart is called bodhichitta. It means awakened heart and it has great strength and resilience in the face of all kinds of challenges and seeming obstacles. 

There is another question that arises for me at this time, regarding this koan. How do we practice in times of darkness. What does it mean that compassion might come in the dark? I can hear someone saying, "but I have no control over my dreams". Exactly. If we could let go of needing to be in control perhaps we could trust what works in the dark.  

Respectfully,

~ Roshi Robert Althouse

Painting of the Week, "Autumn Bliss"

Each season has its own kind of beauty. Autumn ushers in cool, crisp breezes. There is that way the leaves lazily drift down, zig-zagging there way, coming to rest on the earth. There is beauty here in the way things pass away,

I lost both my parents in my early 20's. My father died of cancer. Once he went into a coma in the hospital I spent most of my time in the hospital room with him. I brought in my guitar and sang him folk songs. So I was fortunate to be with him when he took his last breath. That moment was eternal. The same awe and wonder accompanied that moment as does the birth of a new child. The mystery was at once, starkly clear and unmistakable. So for me, this is beauty too. Not the conventional kind of beauty we think of, but something real, deep and abiding. 

Beauty is not a luxury confined to just the rich and to creatives. Anyone can "live artfully" by slowing down, pausing, and appreciating the mundane details of life. These are often irritating, because we are impatient with the spaciousness which allows for context to be fully embodied. You have to be brave enough to occupy the gaps of bewilderment and confusion which can bring with them surprising discoveries and, yes, even beauty. 

Beauty is not a luxury. Beauty is a necessity for living a meaningful life. It enriches, nurtures and ennobles the heart. 

Respectfully,

Roshi Robert Joshin Althouse

P.S. Check out my live Instagram Video talking about Beauty and Living Artfully

And here is a reel I also did sometime ago on Beauty Nourishes the Soul

Painting, "We are All Ukrainians Now" from Don't Look Away series

The war in Ukraine brings everything into stark relief. The Ukrainians are fighting for the freedoms many of us in America take for granted. So it's not just hyperbole when they say they are fighting for everyone. A far-right party just won the election in Italy and has professed sympathy with Putin in the past. Far-right movements are growing across the world and will probably pick up seats in our government in our mid-term elections in November. 

Don't be fooled by people on the far-right. They have no problem lying to sound less extreme and get elected. When they win, Putin wins too. 

Painting, "Still Standing" from Don't Look Away series

Before 1941, there were well intentioned people in America that felt we should not fight a war in Europe. But history proved them wrong. There is a time for peace. And there is a time for war. We learned from history that appeasing dictators does not work. 

So please pay attention this November and make sure your vote counts and keeps people in power that will support democratic values in our own country, because Ukraine is on the ballot now. If Ukraine loses the war, we all lose. 

Respectfully,

Roshi Robert Joshin Althouse

Painting, "Dragonfly Circles" from New Metamorphosis Series

I do not usually paint "things" because that's not how I see the world. I see the world as a process that is evolving, emerging and constantly changing. So when I began painting this series after completing the Pamsula series, I found myself putting creatures in the fields I had painted in that Pamsula series. But the creatures are not separated from the field and that is important for me. 

There is a serious and important teaching in Buddhism about the nature of reality spoken of as emptiness (sunyata). According to this teaching, we do not really experience the nature of reality clearly. Another way of saying this is that we don't experience the thingness of things, the dragonfly-ness of dragonflies. We randomly pick a name or concept and slap that onto what we experience and leave it at that. 

When we pay closer attention to reality through the practice of meditation, we begin to appreciate that reality is much more like a verb than a noun. We usually experience things as things because we are attached or fixated on them as being solid in someway. But with closer attention, with what we call "insight" in Buddhism, we begin to remove that fixation and see things more clearly as they actually are. If we do this consistently, patiently, slowly, we plant a seed in our mind of buddha nature. We begin to see things as they are, the thingness of things, the dragonfly-ness of dragonflies, the butterfly-ness of butterflies. We begin to appreciate the sacred nature of our world and that some basic intelligence is always taking place if we pay attention. 

In this series, I have been trying to represent this kind of experience. 

Respectfully,

~ Roshi Robert Joshin Althouse

"Saguaro Ancestors" by R. Althouse

To Native Americans such as the Tohono O'odham who live in the Sonoran desert in southern Arizona and the northern Mexican state of Sonora, the saguaro cactus is considered one of their ancestors. Tohono O'odham means "desert people". The saguaro cactus fruit was an important plant in their culture. Using long sticks, they harvest this fruit from the tall cactus. They say that now, because of global warming and drought the cactus are blooming later than usual. 

The saguaro cactus takes a long time to grow and has a lifespan of up to 150 to 200 years, if given the right growing conditions. 

Both the saguaro cactus and the gila woodpecker are only found in this area of the world. The cactus are now endangered because the extended drought in the area is causing the younger cactus to die. The older cactus are more resilient. There is now a movement to plant many young saguaro cactus and try to save these magnificent ancestors of these desert people. 

I like this painting. There is stillness at the center with movement on the outside which is pleasing to my eye. Many of my paintings have this sense of being mandala-like without explicitly being a mandala. I also enjoy the subtle colors of the desert. Though I have not been in a desert for many years now, my wife and I plan to vacation in Joshua Tree this winter. I hope to bring more of this kind of color palette into future paintings. 

~ Robert Althouse

Painting, "Milky Way in the Wetlands" by Robert Althouse

I love wetlands. I've always found them mysterious places where birds gather. And since I love birds, I love wetlands. They are muddy and messy but full of life. Their dark waters easily reflect stars at night. 

For me this painting inspires me to imagine wetlands in a much larger context of time and space. For instance, our experience of time is often very limited. But if we think of time mythologically in the Buddhist tradition it is spoken of as a kalpa which is an unfathonable amount of time. A kalpa is said to be the amount of time it takes to wear down a mountain if an eagle wing/feather brushes against it once a century. Or it's longer than the time it would take to fill a 16 mile square box with mustards seeds, at the rate of one mustard seed every hundred years. 

There is also a spacial aspect to this painting as I imagine the wetlands being part of our larger cosmos. 

                 Mato Tipila

Mato Tipila is a very sacred site to the Lakota. They have a wonderful story about how this butte was created. Seven girls were out playing when a bear saw them. He began chasing them. They came to a rock which lifted the seven girls high into the air. The bear tried to chase them up the rock creating the striations that are now seen in the gigantic butte. Then the seven girls rose into the sky to become the pleiades.  

This is a wonderful story that connects us with the cosmos. I hope this painting does the same for you. 

Respectfully,

~ Robert Althouse

Painting, "Birth" from Turtle Island Mandala series

Last month when June and I were driving through Nebraska on our way to the Native American retreat in the Black Hills of South Dakota we drove through the Sand Hills. The Sand Hills are an area of mixed-grass prairie on grass-stablized sand dunes in north-central Nebraska, covering over one quarter of the state. They are the largest sand dunes in North America.

So I asked myself, "how did they get here? If they are here, then there had to be an ocean here at one time." And as I looked into the geological time of this area, I learned that in fact there was an ocean at one time in this area that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic, known as the Western Interior Seaway. This sea existed in the Late Cretaceous, a hundred million years ago to the earliest Paleocene, about 66 million years ago. At the time, the Ancestor Rocky Mountain range existed and slowly eroded, filling up this sea with sediment and rocks. So over time, the ocean rose in elevation, and the water drained off, leaving the sand dunes that we see today in Nebraska and the New Rocky Mountain range that completely replaced the earlier mountain range. 

Painting, "Abraxas" by Robert Althouse

I did this painting last week. As it emerged, I remembered a similar image I painted many years ago when I had an art studio in the garment district of downtown Los Angeles. At that time, I painted a very raw image of a serpent rising out of the ground with his jaws open. And a moth or butterfly was emerging from his jaws. I hung that painting on my studio wall for over a year without really knowing what it was. I only knew that it was numinous and was meaningful and important for me. A year later, I was looking at images on temples in Meso-America and I saw the image of Quetzalcoatl, the plumed-serpent. Immediately, I knew that was what I had painted a year earlier. This archetype was very alive in me, and I spent several more years painting images of Quetzalcoatl. 

Here are two examples of some paintings I did at that time . . . 

Painting, Tiyospaye by Robert Althouse

The term "Tiyospaye" comes from the Lakota language and means extended family. To the Lakota this is broadly inclusive of many who are not in one's immediate blood family. They speak of it as "all my relations." For them, kinship is an important value which brings with it a complex set of relationships of caring, mutual responsibility, respect and reciprocity. Kyle Whyte, a professor at the University of Michigan speaks of this as "kinship time". 

Our western culture is ruled by linear time. So we never have enough time. As they say, "time is money." The workplace today can be manic and frenzied. It seems like the whole world is crashing down. Without providing enough time to connect with each other, employees can feel crushed by performance goals, new policies and software systems, interpersonal conflicts and turf wars. A bad performance review can feel like an abrupt shock where the employee feels like no one has their back. 

When "time is money" the clock is always ticking and corruption will be the likely outcome because the ends begins to justify the means. So those who are already disenfranchised such as people of color, poor people, women, children and old people will be the first to be sacrificed on the altar of progress. 

Contrast this with a culture based on kinship time that engenders interdependence, safety, trust, transparency, and respect for professional boundaries. Such cultures do exist in our western culture, and Daniel Coyle has written about them in his excellent book, "The Culture Code". He found that organizations that value safety before all other values thrive and adapt well to changing conditions. Kinship time values safety as well and places a strong value on relationships of mutual responsibility, reciprocity and respect. 

This has many implications because we often approach the climate crisis through a crisis epistemology. Meeting the IPCC deadlines for reducing our carbon footprint in the next two decades to avoid a 2% rise in average global temperatures is highly challenging in such a short time as 30 years. Linear time generates a sense of the clock ticking. Time is always running out. So what do these rapid commitments to energy transition that would mitigate dangerous climate change get us? No one really knows yet. But a growing literature suggests that environmental injustice against poor communities including Indigenous peoples, is one of the outcomes. 

Painting, "Wolakota" from New Paintings

I just returned from a powerful Bearing Witness Retreat with Lakota Spiritual Elders and the Zenpeacemakers in South Dakota. It was an honor to sit with these extraordinary and beautiful people and listen to their wisdom. I heard sad stories. I heard funny ones. We laughed a lot. And sometimes we cried too. 

One teaching they gave us is called "wolakota" which means harmony, balance or unity. And they strive to live this, not just as an intellectual idea but to be in balance and harmony in whatever situation they are in. It's a beautiful teaching. 

I was uncomfortable for most of the retreat. From the first day the guilt was enormous. I felt like I was someone from the colonial culture that had done great harm to their people. And though they were gracious and generous in every way, I still couldn't shake the guilt. So I was projecting all the time. I felt like a pretentious fraud before these people who had no trace of pretense at all. 

One of the elders was Wendell Yellow Bull. Wendell served in the marines and came back to his home on the Pine Ridge reservation determined to do all he could to help his people. He served as the Lakota County Commissioner and was supervisor for the Oglala Sioux Tribal Ambulance Service. He also served as the Chief of Police for the Oglala Sioux Tribal Department of Public Safety. It was a hard job because many of the youth did not trust authority figures. So early on he was exploring ways to do community policing that would build relationships of trust between the police and the local youth. 

Wendell also has the great honor of being the holder of the sacred canupa (pipe) from the signing of the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. 

These days Wendell raises and trains horses, and mentors young people to do the same. He is obviously proud of these youth who go to school and never wear anything special like cowboy hats, boots or fancy belt buckles. Humility is one of the most important virtues in the Lakota culture. 

Painting, "Wounded Knee" by R. Althouse

Violet Catches is a medicine woman and spiritual elder of the Lakota peoples. As we sat in a circle, I listened to her story about how her family built a cellar to store food such as potatoes, wild turnip and grains so that they could survive the harsh winters of South Dakota. Every day they walked over a mile to get water from the river, which they carried back to nourish their garden. Then one day, she described how U.S. government workers, actually social workers, came and destroyed all the food in that cellar. And to make sure, they came back the next day and tore up that cellar and any remaining food left in it. 

A few days before, Manny, another great spiritual elder of the Lakota nation told us the story of Wounded Knee which took place in 1890. Just over 300 Lakota people had been moving south towards Pine Ridge Reservation, along with the 7th U.S. calvary. As they all gathered to talk at Wounded Knee a loud sound ensued. Perhaps a gun was fired. No one knows for sure, but it set off the calvary who already had 4 powerful Hotchkiss guns trained on the Lakotas. The calvary murdered every Lakota person they could find that day. When they were through over 300 Lakotas lay dead, most of them mothers and children. 

Along with other Zen Peacemakers, my wife, June and I, listened to these stories told by some of the most respected spiritual elders of the Lakota nation. We also heard other stories of bravery and courage and determination. Beauty and ugliness were mixed together, held with prayer, song, grace, unpretentiousness and much humor. We prayed and offered prayer flags on two sacred sites and we performed a tatanka (buffalo) ceremony to protect our people, our communities and our families. 

For one week we sat together in circles and shared intimate stories and tales of victory and defeat. Some of it was hard to hear but we didn't look away and it broke our hearts open. Our government committed genocide on these people. They have almost lost their language and now live on different reservations in South Dakota. The Pine Ridge Reservation is one of the poorest places in the United States with over 80% unemployment. All the signs you would expect to see after genocide are there in full measure from addiction to high rates of suicide. 

"Monarch" from Metamorphosis series by R. Althouse

In my Zen Buddhist tradition we often chant the Four Great Bodhisattva Vows which I have linked to this post with a reel I made using some of my paintings. Click on  the image above to view the reel.

I'm going to keep this post short, as I am currently traveling with June to a Native American Bearing Witness Retreat in South Dakota. To chant these four vows is to raise in yourself a deep intentional aspiration to open to suffering wherever it resides in the human heart and to do all you can to heal that suffering. 

These are dark times with many challenges. The climate crisis and the injustices being inflicted upon women are not separate issues. As June and I travel across the Midwest we see many place names taken from our indigenous culture which is thousands of years old. It is painfully clear to me that I am part of a colonial culture that inflicted great harm and trauma on the indigenous peoples of this land. I will try to keep my heart and mind open as I listen and learn from the Lakota peoples next week. 

Holding these four vows close to my heart/mind will help me remain open to the pain and trauma that is already part of myself. These are dark times, but I am deeply grateful to be here at this moment. I'm grateful to be alive and to play my part in moving this world towards a sustainable future that is more just and fair to all peoples regardless of their gender, skin color, economic status or sexual orientation. 

Painting, "Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva" from Buddha series

In my Zen tradition one of the most important teachings is to take the Bodhisattva vow to save all sentient beings. Taking a vow is actually something that is very ordinary. Everyone does this. If you become a parent you vow to be a good parent. If you are an artist you vow to create something that is meaningful or beautiful in some way. This vow in Zen is a universal vow of benevolence. We vow to be of service in helping everyone, even people we disagree with or don't like. So it's a pretty big vow. But it's not just an intellectual thought. It arises from a deep opening of the heart. It arises from our willingness to let go and be vulnerable. 

When you do this kind of meditation practice of being with yourself in stillness, whatever you have avoided or pushed away eventually shows up. One thing that shows up is your soft spot. Everyone has one. It's your sad and tender heart. It just breaks open. We call this Bodhichitta which literally means "awakened heart". Most of the time we are busy walling this off because this kind of vulnerability is scary to many of us, but when it shows up it's actually a great strength, because it's something genuine in all human beings. We all have a soft spot. 

Painting, "Token" from Vessel Series

A metaphor that occasionally occurs in Chinese culture is that of the token. It also appears in the Blue Cliff Record, a collection of Zen koans. In Chinese culture a token was sometimes used to represent a relationship. So if two lovers had to separate for a long period of time, they might take a jade coin and break it in two, each taking one half. Each hopes that the other doesn't fall in love with someone else during their separation and that they will be joined again and the two halves of the token will come back together. In a way, we all suffer with half a token. But to conclude that no other half is possible is to give up and accept that condition as the only possibility. 

Zen is a wisdom tradition, passed on from teacher to student, transmitted face to face. When the conversation takes place the tradition continues forward and we could say that each time this happens the token is made whole. 

As I write this blog on June 10, 2022, the first House Committee has just presented it's first public finding on the January 6th Insurrection. There is a tension and anxiety in America. The country has never been more divided so we could say, in this respect, the token is currently broken. Will the token be made whole again? I don't know the answer.

Painting, Pamsula 22 from Pamsula series

How are we to meet this moment? I ask this question as one who is concerned about my world, the environment, social justice, my country, community and friends. In many ways, this moment is unsettling and menacing. The threat of violence is palpable and all of us are experiencing anxiety, fear and some degree of trauma. This makes it difficult to remain open and present to ourselves and others. 

So the first answer to this question is straight forward. Pay attention to the details of your ordinary life. Sleeping, eating, cooking, cleaning, putting on your shoes, taking off your shoes, opening the door and so on. It's easy to miss this moment because much of the time we are busy worrying about the past or the future. Robert Aitken Roshi who was a great Zen teacher and activist was once asked by a student what was the essence of Zen and he replied, "Floss regularly and mind your own business." So first, take care of yourself, and then maybe you can take care of someone else too. 

These paintings I've done in the Pamsula Series are metaphors for living a Zen-inspired life. The circle or enso appears in each one of these works. It represents wholeness. There is always a larger context of wholeness that encompasses the division and chaos you might be experiencing. It's helpful to remember that when you feel lost, alone and afraid. You are whole no matter how broken or discouraged you might feel. 

Painting, "Pamsula 4" in Pamsula series

I almost always paint metaphors and this series is no exception. I don't paint things because that's not how I see the world. I have listed these paintings by numbers in the order I painted them so you can appreciate how the metaphor began to shift and expand as I went along. They started out looking like actual rakusus, but as I continued, the metaphor refused to be pinned down. When I organized these paintings I found I had painted over 40 pieces so I edited them down to 33.

I will post one a day for the next month in celebration of this Buddhist path. I have had the good fortune to hear about this spiritual path early in my life and had the opportunity to practice it as best as I can with many other wonderful friends all around the world. 

The pattern in this series is based on what is called a "rakusu" in my Zen tradition. It is a piece of cloth one sews before receiving the precepts and a dharma name in Zen. The cloth it is sewn with is known as "pamsula". In Sanskrit the word means literally "sully", "defiled", "discarded" or "disgraced". In the days of Buddha, it is said that materials called pamsula were taboo for use in society. These included materials used for shrouds covering the dead, those gnawed on by rats, or menstrual rags. Monk's collected these and made their robes from them. So pamsula is thrown away rags made by thrown away people. It's taking something no one wants and making it into something rich and beautiful. So this pattern is meaningful to me, but while it may not mean the same thing to others, I feel that as aesthetic abstract works of art, they also stand on their own. 

Painting, "Think Neither Good Nor Evil" by R. Althouse

In our culture we don't like boredom. We might even associate it with depression. Boredom is how we allow ourselves to slow down, to be embodied and to just be in the moment. But for some reason this is not valued much in our culture. 

I am a Zen teacher and have practiced meditation most of my life. When I teach meditation to new student I tell them about this study that was done at the University of Virginia. 

They did an experiment  in which they found people prefer some kind of passive activity like reading or listening to music over spending a few minutes with themselves. Being alone without any diversions was so uncomfortable for many participants that two-thirds of the men and a quarter of the women elected to give themselves a mild electric shock instead. 

Why do I tell beginning meditators this story? Because people find it hard to meditate. In other words, they find it hard to be with themselves. Because to meditate is to allow yourself to be bored and in our culture this is considered to be the kiss of death. 

Painting: "Beauty in Unexpected Places" by R. Althouse

Beauty is important. It speaks to something in us that is whole, eternal and timeless. It is the way we reveal all that is good and dignified in ourselves and our world. In a world that is often mean and brutal, we need beauty just like we need food and water. 

Beauty is not a luxury but is something essential to living a meaningful life. Beauty ennobles and enriches the heart. 

Painting, "Lighting the Way" from Turtle Island Mandala series

I am pleased to introduce this new "Turtle Island Mandala" series. In this series I have tried to represent the turtle as a spiritual symbol, embodying many of the core values I share with Native Americans.

The term "Turtle Island" is used among Indigenous Peoples to represent the continent of North America. I have framed most of these as mandalas which is another way of representing the sacred. 

Painting, "Still Standing" from Don't Look Away series

Difficult times are an opportunity to deepen our spiritual path and practice, to dig down and ground ourselves in meditation or prayer. Take time to be still, to be quiet and listen. 

Then get up and go outside. Take a walk. There are seasons for everything. The rhythms of change may be large or small, slow or fast. Appreciate the cycles of light and dark, gain and loss. Our world is sacred, timeless and vast. It can be a source of solace for us during times of rapid change if we know how and where to look. We are all intrinsically whole and awake. 

Painting, "Tiger of Meekness" from the "Four Dignities of a Spiritual Warrior" series. 

I live at the cross roads of Zen and art. One thing they both have in common is a quality of whole-hearted attention that is brought to bear on the task at hand. It might be chopping wood and carrying water. Or it might be creating a work of art and happily losing track of time in the process. I think in our culture, we underestimate how important this quality of enriched attention is because it's become a rare and endanger species. Attention is the new currency. Without it you are at the mercy of other peoples' agendas. Madison avenue is only too happy to turn you into a good and obedient consumer. 

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I have worked on paintings in this series for four or five years. They reflect my love of Australian aboriginal art and many of the values I share with indigenous cultural traditions. I believe dreamtime was originally used to reference the religion of Australian aboriginal culture. I do not use it in this way, because I have no direct experience of that religion. For me the term simply implies a liminal experience that is not fully conscious nor unconscious. It something in the middle. I experience this as a place of active imagination and many possibilities not necessarily accessible to me through conventional reality. 

Earlier in my life when I was painting in oils I used to go outside and do plein air paintings. It was the best way to capture the quality of light in a particular landscape. And of course it could change depending on what time of day it was as well. Now that I'm doing digital paintings, I do not do this, but I do usually try and paint landscapes from places where I've been shortly after being there. In doing so, I hope to still capture something unique about the light of that particular landscape. 

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All proceeds from the sale of the paintings in this series will be donated to support the Ukrainian people. This series of paintings began as the war was breaking out in Ukraine during the spring of this year, 2022. And what a strange moment this has been. As new life pushes up from the earth, children are being murdered in the streets of Ukraine. The stories and the voices from Ukraine are unbearable and heart-breaking. I don't really understand why this war is taking place. It is madness. It is utterly futile and pointless. I am helpless in the face of this mass murder. So as an artist and a Zen practitioner my first practice is let go of whatever I think I know about this situation. It is really completely beyond my ability to comprehend or understand. And when I do this then what follows is stillness and meditation. 

Many years ago I began my artistic journey as an oil painter but left that to start the Zen Center of Hawaii around 1994. I gave up painting for the next twenty years in order to teach Zen and grow and develop non-profit Zen Centers. 

So it was with much excitement and joy when I discovered about ten years ago while on a Zen retreat in Wisconsin, that I could still paint but now I had an iPad instead of a canvas. I began to explore digital painting using a Wacom tablet connected to my iMac computer. I used Corel Painter which has gotten better and better with each passing year. 

On the occasion of opening my art business, Robert Althouse Fine Art and the launching of this new web site at althouseart.com