I got an e-mail a couple of months ago from a guy I haven't seen in years.

Back in 1998, I was painting the big Petaluma mural and, due to circumstances beyond my control, an advertiser dropped out and we were stuck quite a bit short on money.

There was this fellow in town, Peter Foster, who had a gas station, Peter's Exxon, that was like a pop art museum. He had a large permanent mural painted on an exterior wall, and a number of portable ones he could wheel around as he pleased. Next to the cashier's building was a plexiglas stature of the Blues Brothers. He was quite a patron of the arts.

I figured, what the heck, I had nothing to lose. I stopped in at his station and explained the situation. He thought for a minute or two, went and got his check book, and cut me a check on the spot. Mind you, this is a fellow I'd never met before. So when I got his e-mail saying he was moving, and could I touch up some murals at his house, I felt I owed him one. Or two.

Here's what I found when I went to his house ­ three very old, faded murals -









I spent about 20 hours over the course of a week or two -- I'll have to look it up -­ painting around the house painters and Peter's dog, Buddy, who had a knack for walking through wet paint.

I'd never really tried painting ocean waves ­ it was kinda frustrating, but fun.

More frustrating was that it was hard to tell what the original murals looked like, so the "touch-up" turned into virtually repainting most of two of them. The third one I knocked out in one long 9 hour day, just so I could finish before a weekend.

Here's how they turned out:

I had quite a time getting these mountains to look like Peter wanted them. The originals were green, I think, and that's how I repainted them. Peter was moving to Utah, and it became apparent he wanted them to look like desert sandstone mountains, so that's what we ended up with. Only had to repaint them three more times.... The moon took some doing, too. I think it was three total repaints for it. In fact, it became apparent that Peter really didn't like parts of the old murals, so I ended up changing things until he was happy. Eventually, Peter was finally happy, and so was I.





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