“Having been friends and colleagues for many years, first meeting in 1979 when Steve began teaching at Atelier Lack and I was beginning my third year there, Stephen Gjertson and I had said many times that we should do portraits of each other. It seemed like the time was never right. The fact that we live so far apart was a hindrance to sittings so the projects seemed unlikely to happen. In the early 2010’s Steve and I began painting for Harlan Crow in Dallas, Texas. My friend, Kim Poarch, who is a master custom framer and gilder began framing most of the paintings being done for the Crow projects. He lives about 15 minutes from my house so it became quite common for Steve to come to Amarillo and install his painting in Kim’s frame and then drive it on to Dallas to deliver it. It was during one of these brief visits that Steve posed for me in my studio. I decided I would use a painting of Steve’s that I own as the primary background for the portrait. It is a painting of the majestic cliff, Palisade Head, overlooking Lake Superior. Since Steve’s head would have to be done primarily from a photo I took in my studio, I wanted to do as much of the rest of the painting as possible from life. Steve’s sweater, palette, paints, painting and frame were done much as a still life arrangement from life in my studio. The cast of the frieze of the Parthenon, which Steve wanted to be in the painting, had to be photographed by Steve in his studio under very similar lighting conditions to which I was painting the other elements of the painting in mine. My goal was to paint his head as broadly as I would from life and integrate it with the other elements done from life. The palette and cups are my primary ones and the colors on the palette are the ones I use. It is the palette that Richard Lack called his “scientific palette” and his “impressionist palette.” He discovered it in the writings of Emile Gruppé. It consists of a warm and cool of each primary and a true red. Lack stressed that to grasp this palette fully one must understand the neutrals obtained by mixing these colors. Anytime all three primaries are mixed, a neutral can occur.  While not Steve’s primary palette, he has also experimented with this impressionist palette of colors. Currently, Steve’s portrait is hanging in his daughter’s home in Minnesota”.