On my desk this morning, the work begins on the book and documentary on the life and times of my late father master artist Erik Dzenis. I am just beginning the process of cataloging over 100,000 images; photographs, paintings, sketches of his life's work; it will take years. Before I can begin to contemplate writing or editing I must first find a publishing company capable printing this book. In this day and age of high tech digital printing, they just forgot one thing: talent. No one is printing high quality art books, those days are gone; therefore the printing masters operating the Heidleberg presses are no longer in demand. Our family specialized in producing the most critical component for high quality art books; the color photography and the separations. We produced thousands of photographs of the works of many famous artists throughout their careers including international wildlife artist's Fenwick Lansdowne and Glen Loates and Robert Bateman. We produced the color transparencies for the color separations; old school technology. These days the printing companies are running coupons for a rock show one minute then high quality art books the next. Except the most of the people running the publishing companies have no idea what they are doing; the technician relies on a computer scan and has no appreciation for visually correct. I visited my brother yesterday in that regard, he is regarded as one of the top color consultants in the business; we discussed the book at length commenting on how many projects came up short became the pictures in the book looked terrible. There are one or two companies in New York with the necessary skills to produce this book, however it looks like we may need to go to Italy to get the job done. A few Italian masters are still working in the trade, we will be lucky is we can find one who is not booked for the next ten years.

Art is the human experience, and Erik always wanted to share his art with the world. He was famous for his grand oil portraits of dignitaries, VIP's and life size modern art ballet paintings and pastels. He was also recognized internationally for the lightning quick sketches he would do on the spot as references for future paintings. These are a few sketches the world has never seen, original pencil drawings by Latvian/Canadian artist Erik Dzenis. These works and others will be included in a retrospect show we are currently working on. They will also be featured in the book and documentary about the life and times of Erik Dzenis. We welcome comments from anyone who recognizes the people in the sketches and photographs. Some very early photo's of a very young Rudolf Nureyev.