Peace is an Expressionist Painter with a long and distinguished resumé, the last few decades in the Pacific Northwest where he has achieved significant acclaim, particularly around his adopted hometown of Grants Pass, Oregon, where seismometer data insists that a major Art Renaissance is preparing to explode!  If this proves true, and the Grants Pass Arts Movement achieves its rightful global prominence, Peace's contributions will be accounted great among those of the other creative spirits responsible.
 

Recently Peace felt moved by recollections of the heroic tales he'd read in childhood about Davy Crocket, Jim Bowie, and all the rest of those guys who died at The Alamo.  What I would have dismissed as a string of coincidences, to Peace was perceived as a calling of sorts; many, many times over a period of very few days he came across odd references to the famous battle and the Mission where it took place that he felt compeled to look into it. A week later he was on a Greyhound bus, Texas bound.  Another week passed and he returned, and with him was the painting below.  Further documenting the adventure, he brought back a San Antonio newspaper clipping, featuring a large color photo with himself in the foreground, painting the Alamo on location! He hasn't signed the canvas yet, so I suspect he intends to take it a little further once this first application of paint dries.

I myself disagree with the idolization of the defenders of the Alamo, and not just because I'm a pacifist, but yes, there is that too.  Nevertheless, I also feel that there another solution, a simpler solution if you disregard man's testosterone fueled tendency to gravitate towards conflict.  It should all be rather obvious after viewing the next painting.

I was with Peace when he began this one, the oldest in this online collection. We had our easels set up side by side at the 1997 Shriner's Circus, held at the Josephine County Fairgrounds as a fundraiser, largely to support the Shriners' Children's Hospital in Portland.  Peace and I had both helped telemarket tickets to this event (working for Miss Vickie, who used to bring zoo animals to television's Romper Room!) and part of the deal was that we got to set up our easels and paint it (alas, my masterpiece remains unfinished...)

Anyhow, the point I started to make was that rather than spending those last few days of securing their certain-to-fail fortifications, Crockett and his men should have been honing up their juggling skills, teaching their donkeys to dance, working on magic tricks, and so forth.  Brewing up a big batch of moonshine might've also helped, for had they put on a good enough show for Santa Anna and his troops, all of the bloodshed could've been avoided while still buying time for Sam Houston to prepare for San Jacinto. I could be wrong but it doesn't happen often.

In Talking About Art, Rogue Planet's blogamajig thingy covering the Grants Pass Arts Scene, this months First Friday headlines read: NO PEACE ON FIRST FRIDAY, and it was a fact.  Peace was in Washington State visiting his brother, but TAA also prophesized that the artist would return with a masterpiece or two, painted en plein aire in that beautiful country. 

As it turns out, he went downtown and painted the local theatre, shown above.  Unsigned as of this photographing, I suspect he intends to work on it some more. 

Not the best photo here (my apologies to the artist) but I find this piece
most intriguing.  Some people say the blue background is sky, 
others (including myself) get a feeling of vertigo, as if we are 
looking down a long irregular slope, downhill to the SEA.