This book is a major work for me accomplished over four years of hard work. It is 8 x 10 inches in size, 300 pages with drawings and photographs.
Available at Amazon:
From the Introduction:
I tell my students, ”The greatest art work is your own life, what you include in and what you leave out.” That is a pretty idea, a nice instruction, poetic. But, in my case, life itself was in charge. Using me, it created the art. The Yankee baseball catcher, Yogi Berra, said, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” That is what really happened. This book is the painting of my life. RW
Praise for The Painting of My Life by Ricker Winsor
“First and foremost, it is honest and engaging. It smacks of life in its purest form and the ending hit me like a ton of bricks as the meaning came roaring into view.”
Joseph Kirk
“In his later years, Ricker remembers with startling insight the high adventure, early loves, and insane escapades of his youth in Spain in the 60’s and his coming of age and artistic maturity all over the world. I think it was Wordsworth who said that poetry “was emotion recollected in tranquility”. If such is the case , this book is poetry from beginning to end.
Joseph Blatz
“Ricker has a gift of amazing and salient candor, very deep, very intimate, very explicit and disclosing on such very personal themes, all of it utterly unself-conscious, and unapologetic for any of the moments of deviance from the norms that may emerge periodically. I admire the fullness of that self-expression greatly.”
Mark Lediard
Ricker Winsor studied English at Brown University and painting and drawing at Rhode Island School of Design where he received BFA and MFA degrees. His first book, Pakuwon City, Letters from the East, is available at Amazon. His essays and short fiction have been published at “Reflets du Temps” in France and at Empty Mirror Books. Ricker is an artist and writer living in Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia. Visit him at rickerwinsor.com, Facebook, Twitter.
Chapters
Evanston, Illinois
Pelham Manor, New York
Cancer
A New Name
Carrying On
More Operations
I Dream
The Nature of Things
Limpy
The Pigeon Place
Pelham Bay Wilding
Boarding School
Straight Pool
Breaking Away
On the Road
La Plaza de Santa Ana
Reefer Madness
The Acid Test
Ma’s Face
My Father
The Neighborhood
Pig Pen
Breaking Down
We Had Each Other
Awakening
Providence
To France
The Garden
My Otter
Hunting
Starting Over
Catskill Bill
When the Moon is in the Seventh House
Puget Sound
Indonesian Love Story
Walking the Walk
Trinidad
Dengue Fever
My Father’s Letter
Ending
Early AM, a Poem
A Search for Meaning 