On the Way to WorkRichard Soberpaintings

I reached the sanctuary for the maladjusted at ninety-miles-per-hour, screaming across the plains of the Texas panhandle, most grateful to be leaving that mythical kingdom for the more pleasant, if not greener, pastures of New Mexico. No one was there to greet me with a smile, a heavy handshake, or outstretched arms. The air seemed fresher. I was intoxicated by my own dreams and the very real heartbreaking beauty. I ever lived in the moment, it was a long time ago, but, it was during this intense mid-afternoon silver July light that I found myself driving through, that I knew it was still possible to re-invent oneself. And I knew this place was inhabited by second-class angels, people betrayed each other as anywhere else, in the morning someone still owed somebody something. In the last hours of my life, on the other side of an invisible bridge, I gathered paintings from a desert’s floor.

RS 2008