We went to see what we could see and stumbled upon Jerome, AZ. It looks like an old town created for a movie. The windy road up the hill has houses whose front doors hug the road; the back door sits high above the cliff it’s settled on, precariously perched on stilts.

We pulled into the Jerome HighSchool parking lot to discover that long ago, over 40 years ago, it became art studios. Robin John Anderson was having a one man show in this town with a population of 474.

“Proclaimed the “Wickedest Town in the West” in 1905, Jerome earned its notorious reputation because of bordellos, saloons, gambling and gunfights.“ It is a ghost town now with tons of character.

Robin Anderson and his wife have owned the high school for 41 years. Just six weeks prior to our visit, his wife had died. He was 21; she was 34 when they married. When she died, he’d discovered she was older than she’d ever let on. The age difference was more than the 13 years he’d been told.

As we walked through his exhibit, he explained his mathematical way of dividing the canvas. Once upon a time he painted en plain air, but now with his formula, all his paintings come from his imagination.

I liked the ease of them and the brightness.