Since I was a child I have understood the world visually.  I've always kept journals which I filled with words as well as visual impressions and ideas. These have been the maps of my soul’s journey.  They have helped me to find my way in life.  They are the record of my conversations with myself and with God.  

Back in the 70s my friend and fellow teacher at Trinidad Catholic High School, Joe Tarabino, shared an idea that he had about making a documentary film exploring the cultural, historical and natural features along Purgatoire River.  The concept of journeying along the river played in my imagination over the years and worked its way into my soul. Finally I embarked upon my personal pilgrimage along the banks of the Purgatoire, hiking from its confluence with the Arkansas, upstream to the headwaters where the river begins as tiny trickles seeping out of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. I kept journaling along the way, recording thoughts and images as they came to me.  El Rio de Las Animas Perdidas en Purgatorio, The River of Lost Souls in Purgatory, became the theme of my life and art.   

The Purgatoire is not a mighty river.  Back where I come from in Indiana we’d have called it a creek. But it become a powerful reality for me, full of twisting redirection and obstructions and struggles and persistence and determination. In it I heard the music of the earth and felt the forces of masculine and feminine archetypes intertwined as the waters flowed toward the sea.  It become the metaphor for my personal pilgrimage, my journey as an artist and as a human being, my struggle to move upstream toward the source of love and life.  

For three years I walked the river in sections, through its deep canyons, sometimes along its banks, sometimes wading through its waters, sometimes weaving through thick vegetation.  I hiked alone, climbing to a high point at the end of each day to call on my cell phone to report my GPS coordinates.   

I began my journey where William Bent of Bent’s Fort fame was buried beside the river. I passed by Boggsville where Kit Carson spent the last days of his life. I passed by Penitente moradas and Hispanic mission churches. I walked along the track ways of dinosaurs and saw the ruins of the cabins of homesteaders and along the painted canyon walls created by the hermit, Martin Bowden. I saw rock art of ancient natives and explorers and cowboys too. And I hiked through the Army’s Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site, which now threatens to transform the river valley into a live-fire zone. I passed by the site of Drop City hippie commune, and the Cokedale mining camps. Ominous thunderheads poured forth, bejeweling the short grass prairie with water beads and glorious sunrises set the canyon walls ablaze.  I smelled the mud and felt the heat and my personal journey along the Purgatoire became the stuff of me and of my art.   

And there is another journey that has been a significant inspiration for my artwork as well; a less personal journey.  The trip made along the Purgatoire by travelers on the Santa Fe Trail.  Many years ago I illustrated a book written by Janie Kurtz titled Characters Along the Santa Fe Trail. Since that time I have painted many depictions of this fascinating chapter of history, much of which took place along the river.  My images of the trail have been used by the National Park Service in their interpretive displays along the trail from Independence Missouri to Santa Fe, New Mexico.  

Three years ago, when I saw a leaked Army Map which revealed the Army’s plan to take up to five million acres of land to expand the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site I contacted opposition leader, Lon Robertson to see how I could help. One thing that I knew I could do was to hang a show at the A.R. Michell Museum of Western Art in Trinidad during the 2007 Santa Fe Trail Symposium. The show titled, "Arduous Journeys" featured paintings done for the National Park Service depicting the Santa Fe Trail as well as images of the threatened Piñon Canyon region.

A real bond developed as I fought along side the ranchers. I offered my artistic services to them in the form of graphic designs for publications and tee shirts, and I went with them to the state capital to speak out against the injustice of the United States military forcing hard working American citizens from their homes and land. I realized that artists and ranchers had something in common; a sense of vocation. "Neither ranching nor making art is a way to accrue a lot of money," says Holdread, "but they are both ways of life that are a response to a deep inner calling." 

As I became immersed in the Piñon Canyon issue the inner conflict between art and activism emerged. When I initially became involved I told myself that I would do it as an artist, but my art started to suffer, taking a back seat to all of the other stuff; studying military documents, writing letters to the editor, attending hearings and making presentations all over the state. 

That's when it dawned on me that I could be the bridge between cowboys and artists.  I talked it over with the ranchers and they agreed that opening up their land to artists might be a good way to gain some needed public awareness as well as raise some funds through a benefit exhibition.  So I began emailing artists all over the state with a call to arms. The response was heartening with over fifty artists pledging their support.  

And so the random imagery of my art and the random events of my life have been connected by the flow of the Purgatory River and the course of the Santa Fe Trail through this remarkable landscape of prairies and canyons.