I was a painting major at Ithaca College in 1972. My great teacher was the first generation abstract expressionist and New York School painter Robert Richenburg. Uggg, no one has ever heard of him but he exhibited with Pollack, Kline, Hoffman. de Kooning and Still etc. He was a wonderful ahead-of-his-time painter and inspirational teacher. He would alway encourage us to go beyond what we have seen in art before. With that in mind, I started working with black tar on canvas. I was doing large spill marbleized works. I would take gallons liquid tar and then spill gallons of bright colors into the tar. While still in it's liquid state, I would shake and tilt the whole unit of paint-on-tar-on-canvas. The result was very dreamy and primal marbleized effects of bright colors organically blending into each other on a black tar ground. It took several days for the tar-paint recipe to dry. There would be some rippling to the surface. It took on a 3D paint\\u002Ftar out-of-this-world Sci-fi landscape. The latex paint reacted its normal path of the drying process. While in the dry state, I placed a 3-inch plastic toy Army Soldier in at light area of the work. With raking light, I photographed the soldier from a vertical POV looking straight down. Marvelous shadows and color play resulted. The effect was a very early combo of Art and Photography by the same creator. Oh yes... let's not forget Staged Photography. In many future works, I photographed my own paintings on location.