Long Ranch's Owner

---

I grew up on a gorgeous ranch in an idyllic valley S of Reno many eons ago,  even went to a one room schoolhouse for a few years. After high school I took off for parts less known: Stanford, Antioch College, the Haight-Ashbury scene, then an isolated homestead in far northern British Colombia for 5 yrs, hanging w the moose and grizzlies and wolves, getting a tutorial in aboriginal existence & elemental mindfulness.   BC was too cloudy & wet, though, for me, so I skedaddled back to SF, started oil painting at The SF Art Institute (even came up w an MFA),  in the meantime bought a nice old house for next to nothing, made a studio downstairs, lived upstairs, survived  the punk scene there  in the late 70's, early 80's... At the same time I bought an abandoned cheese factory for even less than next to nothing in a spectacular remote valley (Surprise V) in NE CA/NW NV to give me an escape/respite fr the onset of terminal urban dysphoria. Then off to the frenetic East Village scene in NYC for 5 years, where I  flourished & nearly succumbed to the hyper-narcissistic "art world." Back again to SF (and Surprise Valley,)  marriage, beautiful daughter,  great gig installing trade shows at the SF convention center (super flexible hours, good money/benefits), which afforded me a glimpse of the shiny bowels of high-end capitalism & an appreciation of the (now-extinct) union movement... Eventually we added a speakeasy in the basement of my SF house ("The Undisclosed Location,"  it was called, had bands, performances, etc...).    Always I maintained a frequent part-time presencel in Surprise Valley, & in 2000 I sold the cheese  factory for an isolated abandoned oasis/ranch just over the border in NV, a fixer-upper if there ever was one, which has been the major focus of my refurbishing talents ever since... Given the encroaching gloom from the outside world, it has become more & more a splash of beauty & tranquillity in the pervasive murk, a tiny utopian negation to the prevalent cultural & political miasma we now are forced to call home.   Mostly now I hole up on the ranch, except for brief forays back to what currently passes for civilization, to see my daughter/friends, & to remind myself why I am better off out here in the middle of nowhere....  I seem to have become a gregarious hermit,  & unquestionably somewhat eccentric at this point, I suppose -- given the increasing empowerment of our corporate state  & its zealous thought police, my ranch & myself are fast becoming anachronistic holdouts fr the former age of freedom known now nostalgically as The Old Normal....Ahhhh, those were the days...  Anyway,  I'm appreciative of creative self-aware individuals and free-thinkers of all types, and have an affinity for artists/writers/musicians, people who push the envelope right out of the box, so to speak.... Also, I have had a life-long interest in Eastern religions and practices (been to India and Nepal, also Europe, Mexico and Guatemala), and I value a mindful, contemplative and compassionate (and humorous!) approach to our shared endeavors here on our whirligig orb. And I still am doing paintings, so you might get a studio visit, if you wander this way, & show some interest..

View Johns paintings here: https://www.johnwhitehead-art.com/small-paintings-and-drawings