I’m usually not one to gamble. And I’m certainly not one for pushing his luck when a gamble pays off. For those of you who have spent any amount of time in my gallery reading the assorted rants and raves of my art descriptions, you probably know how I feel about gambling on commissions. For the most part, I’ve had pretty crappy luck until recently, when I started dealing with the great Steve Mannion. Even then I hesitated to get more work done by Steve, but he proved to be not only a tremendously talented artist, but a true professional and a great guy.

It was after posting one of my Mannion pieces that I was contacted by fellow CAF guy Kasra Ghanbari about a young artist he was repping named Wade Furlong. Kaz asked me to check out Wade’s CAF gallery to see if I might be interested in setting up a commission.

Now just because I was having such good success with my Mannion commissions, it didn’t necessarily mean I was ready to dive right into getting one from an artist that I wasn’t familiar with. And after I checked out Wade’s sample work in his gallery, I was even more uneasy, as his style was quite radical to say the least. But god bless Kaz for not taking NO for an answer. He obviously knew what I did not, and that was what a truly gifted and amazing artist Wade is. As such, he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I don’t want to go into detail about this, as I don’t want to put Kaz on the spot. But suffice it to say that a deal was struck and I put in my commission order.

Shortly after the commission was set up, I had the great pleasure of meeting Kaz and Wade at SuperCon 2008 down south. I didn’t get to spend a lot of time with them, but I did have a rather nice conversation with Wade and it was subsequent to that conversation that I received a wonderful email from him telling me how pleased he was to meet me and how impressed he was by my enthusiasm and passion for not only the hobby, but the artist and artwork that I collect. Wade went on to tell me that he so enjoyed our meeting and that it was really fueling his motivation for the work he was doing on my piece.

Well, as you can all see, Wade did an absolutely phenomenal job! Words like ASTOUNDING, BREATHTAKING, and STUNNING, don’t even begin to cover it. All I can come up with is this. If, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, then THIS picture is the nicest thing anyone has ever “SAID” to me!

I really wish I knew of a way to put more weight into these two simple words. But for now, I’ll just leave it at THANK YOU.

Some special thanks to Kasra Ghanbari for being a great artist rep, and for believing in his client, and especially for not taking no for an answer. To Jonathan & Joel Mueller for helping me capture the moment in both pictures and sound, and for pedaling all the way over from San Francisco (yep, they don't have a car) in the middle of the night to do so!

Wade, I truly hope that your amazing talent opens the door to all your dreams. Stay true young man…………

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