Lester profile picture

Lester

I am here for Friends

About Me

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What can I tell you about myself... I love gardening, silent movies, collecting rare books on fin-de-siecle culture, laughing, listening to John Lennon’s home recordings, e.e. cummings writings, these most amazing creatures purring at my feet, my sweet mother who is the dearest and most basic of my responsibilities, any kind of coffee, staying up to gaze at the stars, a nice stream of pure consciousness, sincerity, candor, natural gestures, driving around the western United States in my Jeep, across southern deserts and towns covered in snow, the highest mountain peaks, remembering my friends in Portland, Salt Lake, Seoul, dreaming about Prague, Brussels, Khajuraho, Sukhavati, and standing on the high cascades throwing long shadows accross our earthly paradise. My life here is blessed and blissful. I’m 41, I rarely drink, I’m surrounded by nice, boring people. When I think of a good relationship, I imagine two neighboring solitudes, each richly natured and uniting two deep, individual worlds. It's rarely found of course, but ever since I can remember I’ve had that image. I get this feeling, it’s extraordinary really, this enthusiasm, mostly in the presence of my paints and easel. I don’t mind the distance between friends, which makes it possible for me to turn my thoughts toward the poetic... it don’t tempt me, but friendship does, because I want to experience more within a solitary spirit, which does not allow this opportunity for true sharing. But more specifically, I have a love to create. Create anything at all, but create. I’ve done many things from re-modeling my house to building guitars and playing some too. I've made another
" " web site " of my favorite, more private moments drawing, but as far as being an artist, I couldn’t have a more casual attitude. I've moved around alot and lived in places from Southern California to Greece. In 1993 I moved to Portland, Oregon... to work in the Museums a while, to dream, to realize my ideal, to conjure it up. I’m a little ashamed because of my noble calling as a painter, all things considered, if you take the word literally, a painter should ultimately paint. But that’s not the case with me. At any rate, I decided to leave the whole damned scene, which doesn’t amuse me at all, and in 2000 came to Southern Oregon. I like the way people leave their houses open here at night, and the way the birds sing in the garden, and how everything’s easy and relaxed. Here, absolute tranquility reigns. I live in a charming little town, in a valley with large and beautiful mesas and surrounded by endless mountains, where I enjoy hiking through forests and along trails and my spirit is often quite overwhelmed. While there I sometimes read or take photographs on the banks of the many rivers. It is one of the most beautiful places of my life, perhaps the most beautiful of all, and is so rich in meaning that a great deal of care would be needed to describe it properly. It is wonderful in this warm and cozy spot to wander through the streets and parks of the nearby little towns that in no way can be touched by city life. How I love the open spaces, and the splendor of the oceans and the sunrises and the sunsets. I feel an ecstasy as I watch silver ripples, which seem to smile as they chase each other on the surface of the water. Can you imagine that I am completely absorbed by the atmosphere of this world, and that nothing counts more than nature, aside from love. Nature, just nature is what matters when nothing else does. As for my artwork, I’m doing none at all and I do absolutely no exhibits. I have no passion for it right now, anyway. I’ve done plenty of really good pieces and that’s fine. I look them over sometimes and feel there is still work to do, and that bothers me somewhat, but I’ll get back to it and pick it up. For the moment it doesn’t interest me much. I’ve come along way since the time I could connect with a city, love alone, and here I am. I feel I am a decent man (perhaps even a “good sport”), very inspired, but who lives more and more within himself. An honest man too, who likes Southern Oregon and is liked in return, whose tendency is kind when it is appropriate, firm when necessary, but a gentle, compassionate, peaceful man surrounded by his roses, basically very intuitive, neither rich nor poor, and sleeping well at night. Someone who is fundamentally pleased with his life, which is both domestic, and deeply felt.

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My Interests

I'd like to meet:

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"There once was a man who said though, It seems that I know that I know, What I'd like to see, Is the I that knows me, When I know that I know that I know." ...Alan Watts

Music:

I like the Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Lindsey Buckingham, Marc Knopfler, Tom Petty, Neil Young, Led Zeppelin, The Eagles, Paul Simon, Bob Marley, John Lennon, Leonard Cohen, John Cale, Pete Townshend, Pink Floyd, Nirvana, The Verve, Mazzy Star and most paisley underground bands, John Coltrane, Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Django Reinhardt, soft drums and chants of India, Amsterdam Guitar Trio, California Guitar Trio, chamber music such as Beethoven, Bach, Dvorak, Debussy and Bizet… but just a little, mostly I prefer quietness.

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Movies:

An Inconvenient Truth, Henry V (1996), Hamlet (1990), Romeo and Juliet (1968), Grapes of Wrath, The Razors Edge (1984), Francesco, The Messenger, Monty Python and The Holy Grail, The Life of Brian, Time Bandits, Triplets of Belleville, Jakes women, My Cousin Vinny, Only You, Don Juan DeMarco, Casablanca, Crazy/Beautiful, Barfly, Basquiat, Camille Claudel, Goya en Burdeos, Wolf at the Door, Un Chien Andalou, The Seventh Seal, Nosferatu, From Dusk til Dawn, Young Frankenstein, and anything by Charlie Chaplin, Woody Allen, Brothers Quay, or with Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, George Carlin, Helena Bonham Carter.

Television:

a few shows... CHARLIE ROSE, Home Improvement, Mash, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, The Twilight Zone, Nature, Nova, Mystery

Books:

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"nothing false and possible is love (who's imagined, therefore limitless)"... e.e. cummings

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"The camera cannot compete with a brush and canvas as long as it can't be used in heaven and hell..." Edvard Munch

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My Blog

McCartney-Dylan Parody

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Posted by Lester on Mon, 28 Jan 2008 09:26:00 PST

my life is really uneventful lately

& but all evening i've been looking at some truly magnificent paintings and that is what often saves me from the monotony of everyday. i was just putting some of them together in a slideshow... lots o...
Posted by Lester on Fri, 23 Nov 2007 09:18:00 PST

WIP


Posted by Lester on Sat, 01 Sep 2007 08:39:00 PST

NEW PRINTS !!!

are here at last!! www.lwstafford.com ...
Posted by Lester on Fri, 23 Mar 2007 09:35:00 PST

About my work:

My drawings are not drawings. They're a feeling. If I had to tell you why I darken paper and lift away layers of charcoal, I could not without first telling about the materials I use and that attach ...
Posted by Lester on Tue, 30 Jan 2007 09:47:00 PST