He was the greatest craftsman our town had seen. He painted the mayor (and family), he painted the infamous entrepreneurial Five Bachelors (and pets), he painted Cliff Arbuckle (and prize-winning kokanee) on the shores of Lake Shawmut.

We always told him he was meant for bigger things. No one knew what kept him here; his ability to continue on in obvious discontentment remained something of a local mystery.

He seldom smiled, and the light in his studio could often be seen late into the night, long after the rest of us had retired. He would paint portrait after portrait in silence on those nights. They were, undoubtedly, masterpieces, scenes pulled straight from his imagination without need for models or props. But with rare exception he burned them all in a private ceremony the following day, and never spoke of them again.

It’s said that he had no passion, no capacity for happiness. He never married. He just painted, all the while gazing wistfully at the clouds through the window, and he died very young.