Donna Gillispie, a special
longtime friend of mine, is a wonderfully talented artist in the scenic Ozark
Mountains in the Branson, Missouri area. She has won many well-deserved awards
for her watercolor paintings and is frequently invited to share her skills
in art classes and seminars. She is also an expert in creating beautiful
hand-marbled papers, a relatively rare and intricate artform.
Because of my friendship with Donna and her husband Jack, I have been a perennial
visitor to the Branson area for quite some time. We enjoy fishing, canoeing,
etc. up in that area, and Branson is also well-known for its music venues.
So those trips afford me the additional opportunity to perform with my musical
saws in that area, including several occasions at
Silver Dollar City, a regional
theme park.
Donna had been planning to surprise me with a gift painting of my saws for
some time, but this would prove to be an obviously difficult task to keep
secret, since she wanted to personalize it as much as possible. In 1992,
I was honored to debut with the Dallas
Symphony Orchestra as a saw soloist in a series of concerts. To mark
this occasion, Donna decided to paint the above watercolor. So while I was
visiting in Branson later that year, she photographed three of my saws on
her patio to use as a reference. She subsequently had me send her a copy
of the music that I performed with the Dallas Symphony, the Rachmaninov
Vocalise, which she painted quite detailedly into the background.
On my next trip to Branson in 1993, I became the proud parent of the original
painting and brought it back to its new home here in Texas!
Thanks, Donna! for both the painting and your friendship! |
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