When I got the go-ahead to create The Texas Courthouse Renaissance, I had a rare opportunity. I had a blank page in front of me, well, the first of many. My first decision was to do the book I had imagined for a long time. My overriding idea was to think of all the books I had enjoyed here and there as I had lived my life, often as the ball in a pinball game, bouncing off obstacles, controlled by the player who seemed to delight in my crashing about for others’ amusement.
I concluded I wanted a book that I would enjoy, one I might come across wherever I had nothing else to do. A book I could open to any page and find amusement or, heaven forbid, informative, some nugget of trivia I would carry with me henceforth. If even one of you experiences the pleasure I experienced as I saw Ol’ Rip in his little velvet-lined coffin, that amusement of once again smiling, hearing a voice in my head saying, “Well, that’s Texas,” then I’ve done what I set out to do.
First of all, though, I wanted to sincerely express my feelings to those individuals top to bottom who had done the heavy-lifting and turned a “good idea” into a success! How often does that really happen?! Sorry for my skepticism, but the Texas Historic Courthouse Preservation Program was not only a great and necessary idea, but it actually has worked and courthouse by restored courthouse, it continues…and the true beneficiaries will be our grandchildren and theirs, being able to see these noble monuments to our past. I also wanted to avoid those “life irritants” that crop up, such as an illustration on a page with no information about it that I can easily find.
Visually, I had one overriding goal, to try to show the courthouses as I saw them, as a person who delighted in their presence. I realized the delight was akin to that I felt whenever I might unexpectedly see a friend I hadn’t seen for a while. Since I was a photographer who practiced ‘old-fashioned’ hand coloring and the objects of my pleasure were “old,” I naturally decided to color the photographs by hand.
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