With the vision and purpose built through his exhibits Visions and Voices and The Gold in the Modern-Day Spirit of Old, the artist turns his brush back to his homeland in the body of work entitled The Gold and the Gold Rush in the American West.  Here he mixes his own paint and varnishes from raw pigments, oil and other elements, creating a variety of consistencies, textures, colors and hues.  These colors and textures sculpt landscapes of the west, portraying the gold in scenes that have witnessed man’s rush for the gold through the ages.  As in his previous works, the artist’s motive is not to honor mankind in nature, nor to find redemption through nature.  In these landscapes, and in their inhabitants, we see a gold of the west that is vanishing yet permanent, tangible yet untouchable.  In rushing red waters and still blue streams, in blood-red skies and oddly broken paths, in violet shadows of desert creatures and soft reflections in cool waters, in broken tree limbs, in new life of spring grasses, in the brightness of the day and in the darkness of the oncoming night, the gold of the western frontier confronts us, hidden yet unmistakable.  In some of the paintings, settlers move in the landscapes, embedded in the colors.  This gold rush is different from the gold rush in the stories of the conquering of the western frontier.  Here we see, as in The River Rhine, the motion of the primary colors as they combine and separate again, creating the forms of trees and animals, of mountains, rivers, and rocks, set against a western sky; we see again the green tree by the pathway and the red blaze of the sun upon the rock.  In viewing these paintings, we become settlers of the west too, moved by the colors, and part of The Gold and the Gold Rush in the American West.