UPDATE: Richard L. Sample passed away on August 10, 2021.

Recently, I interviewed Richard Sample, Paige’s ex-boyfriend, friend, painter, sculptor, collage-maker, furniture-maker.

He now lives in the Coachella Valley area of California.

Richard Sample was still living in Sun Valley, Idaho when he was interviewed by Daily Mail reporter Ryan Parry in 2014. He says he doesn’t know who gave his name to Parry in association with Paige Young.

I am thankful to Richard Sample for inviting me to interview him in person. He took the time and effort to talk about Paige Young. It was not always easy for him (or me).

Thanks also to his niece Ellen (Ellie) Sample who has been insightful and supportive.

At the appointed time, I pulled up in my rental car and parked next to Richard’s house. There was a chainlink fence and gate that had a big padlock on it and the house was about 10 yards beyond it; I called out his name several times and did not get a response.

Luckily, Richard’s niece Ellie pulled up in her car, got out and told me Richard’s neighbor had called and told her that “there is woman in a red car in front of her Uncle Richard’s house.”

Ellie unlocked the gate and as we walked toward the house, she told me that Richard doesn’t hear very well now.

Ellie said that she was aware of the interview, but “didn’t ask him any questions so that he feels he has his own life.” Ellie lives one street over and has been very involved with caring for Richard since he moved to the area.

Richard warmly greeted me with a hug as did his dog Tolly. Ellie left us to the interview.

Richard Sample gave me permission to quote him in my article.

After we sat down to talk, Sample said to me:

“In 2001 I got throat cancer. I got radiation that burned the lining of my throat and my whole body. I also had a surgery and they cut my throat, it left me hard to talk, hard to drink, hard to eat… I am dying.”

Richard Sample is now 84 years old and does not hear too well or speak easily. I strained to hear his whisper of a raspy voice. I tried to understand what he was saying, but I didn’t always understand right away. I got better at understanding him as our conversation got going.

I will say Richard and I didn’t exactly have a normal flowing conversation. It was more of a question and answer session. Mostly the answers Richard gave took him a long time to say. I also got to know him as a person and shared my journey with researching Paige’s story.

This chapter will be a mixture of exact quotes from my tape recorder and hand written notes.

Background of Richard Sample and his connection to Los Angeles.

His father was Charles “Charlie” Sample, well known artist and metal smith, eccentric Los Angeles (and other parts of California) character.

Richard was born in Huntington Beach in 1936, 3 years after his parents married.

“My father (Charlie Sample) was a famous gold and silver smith. He made silver spurs for $8000. He also made belt buckles and horse saddles for Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, John Wayne, Mae West, Tim Holt,” said Richard.

Richard showed me a recent catalog for a company producing artistic, high quality western gear: Bohlin.

It featured Charlie Sample designs by name.

Horse saddles, bridles, spurs, belt buckles, bolo ties, rings, bracelets etc.

Richard’s mother, the former Virginia Smith, was one of about 8 women that modeled for the Columbia Pictures symbol.

His parents divorced when Richard was young and his mother remarried and had more children. Charlie moved on and did not see Richard for a while. Charlie had more marriages and children too.

Richard was upset and angry about his parents’ divorce. He “acted out negatively,” according to a relative I messaged on ancestry.com.

News articles indicate that Richard’s
“negative acting out” included being on the wrong side of the law.

San Bernardino County Sun Feb. 29, 1960

Richard and Paige got together after the end of his relationship with Sylvia Nicolosi shown above.

Sylvia is the daughter of famed LA based sculptor Joseph Nicolosi. She was one of three sisters.

I found several articles about her, she usually went by the name Maria.

Richard said he was in the military in the 1960s but “never made it to Vietnam, just Ft. Bragg North, Carolina.” He then showed me his military ID.

When our interview began, Richard was excited to tell me about aspects of Paige’s personality and character.

“Paige lived in a converted chicken coop on the edge of Malibu.“

Richard doesn’t remember which edge. (I’m confident it was the Topanga Canyon area or closeby.)

“For a dinner party, Paige had a different chair for each guest to use, not a matching (dining) set.”

“She would only eat salad if it was a day old.”

“I never saw Paige with shoes on.” (see chapter 1970 Warhol, Paige appears with her date at the Pasadena Art Museum Warhol opening and is photographed wearing a ankle length Rudi Gernreich dress barefoot. This is described by the reporter.)

“She is the only person I’ve ever known who ate ice cream with a fork,”

At the end of Richard and Paige’s first date….coming soon.

I asked about Hamish, the horse she had owned since junior high and still had in late 1964 according to her divorce filing. Richard responded she did not keep a horse in Malibu that he knew of. (Malibu is a town with a history of horse and stable owners and dedicated riders)

Paige would often strip down to her underwear and “run around topless or even nude.” Confirmed. Westwood neighbor Melanie told me that Paige often walked around nude in the shared backyard. It got on her nerves. Paige’s nudity was also described to me by Malibu friend Veronica.

When Richard met Paige

Paige was “going with a man named Harry Gesner.“

“He was an architect who designed the Cooper house in Malibu. The house was on the cover of Life magazine. Harry Gesner was a client of my landlord.”

“My landlord was Edward Ravick; he was involved with the Malibu Colony and maybe lived there at times,” said Richard

“Ravick sent Gesner and Paige to my studio in Malibu, to see my art.”

“This is how I met Paige.”

Eleven months ago, the world got a little duller with the passing of Malibu architect Harry Gesner at the age of 97. To say Gesner led a full life would be putting it mildly; the word “epic” might be more apt. Born in Oxnard to an engineer father and an artist mother, he learned to fly a plane at 14, stormed the beach at Normandy aged 19, worked as a waterski instructor in Lake Arrowhead, turned down an invitation from Frank Lloyd Wright to study at Taliesin in favor of being a tomb raider in Ecuador, squired models and actresses, fraternized with Errol Flynn and Marlon Brando, collected fancy sports cars, including a 1957 Mercedes 190SL convertible that he adapted to be all-electric, and surfed every day into his late ’80s

Pauline O’Connor DIRT, a magazine about real estate. June 1, 2023. Dirt is now called The Robb Report.

Paige Young was one of the models Harry squired.

Notice the names above. Edward Ravick being one. Before I saw the above pamphlet on ebay, Richard had told me about the buyers of his art: Vincent Price, Elaine de Kooning, and Harry Gesner, spelled incorrectly here, had purchased his art. Edward Ravick is also listed as a buyer.

This confirms Richard’s comments to me using all these names was the truth.

Elaine De Kooning attended the prison art exhibits that Richard participated in during his prison stint. Documented in newspapers.

I have found two mentions in an online Malibu newspaper on but not “saveable.” There was an Edward Ravick mentioned in a Malibu paper connected to real estate in the 1960s.

Jonathan Winters

I first contacted Richard by old school letter writing as there was no phone number for him that worked.

In that letter, I asked him if he knew of a connection with Paige and comedian-actor legend Jonathan Winters.

Early on in our interview, Richard asked why I wrote him asking about Winters.

I told him about the many newspaper interviews with Paige, I found from 1969 as she was traveling to promote Playboy After Dark.

In a few or the articles, it says Paige “appeared in many skits on The Jonathan Winters Show.”

(See my chapter on Paige’s Most Public Year 1969).

I then asked Richard why he called Jonathan Winters an “asshole” in his letter back to me.

His answer:

“Dennis, (does not remember his last name) was the owner of the Golden O Gallery, in Los Alamos, he told me that Jonathan Winters used to come and sit on the sidewalk at Dennis’ gallery and talk about Paige, and he had nothing good to say, it was always nasty or negative. I never met the man, but Dennis could tell you all about it. Richard added that Dennis never met Paige, but he “did know about her.”

Presumably because of Jonathan Winters.

He said he wasn’t aware of her appearing on the show during its run from 1967-1969.

He said it is a possibility that she did and he didn’t know about it.

Richard said that Paige never said anything about Jonathan Winters when they were together.

Winters was serious about his painting hobby.

He published a book of his paintings, Hangups.

For many years Winters resided at least part time in Montecito, which is quite close to the town of Los Alamos.

Bill Cosby

was a frequent visitor and performer at many Playboy Clubs in the 60s 70s and maybe even beyond. He was a close friend to Hugh Hefner during those years.

Richard said he would occasionally pick up Paige at the Sunset Strip Playboy Club, after her shift. She worked at the club “for about 3 months,” he said.

“Bill Cosby was always trying to put the make on Paige. She didn’t want anything to do with him, she ignored him,” said Richard.

Richard then told me of one time when he was picking Paige up from the club after her shift. He saw Bill Cosby get angry at Paige after she rebuffed another one of his advances.

Richard then asked me if I was, “sure that Paige committed suicide and was not murdered.” I told him that I owned a copy of her death certificate with suicide by gun typed into the cause of death box cert. and I showed it to him.

“I wouldn’t ever think she would do that,” he said shaking his head at the document.

I decided not to tell Richard there is more proof of a suicide besides the death certificate: witnesses like neighbor Melanie, the man D. DeWitt listed as a “2nd witness” on the police report, the police at Paige’s house on that day. (See chapter on LAPD report) And the coroner’s report.

Celeste Huston told me in a Facebook exchange, which I no longer have, that Bill paid for Paige’s art lessons. She mentioned having lunch with Bill and Paige (and her husband John Huston) at the studio where he was filming in the early 70s.

Melanie is the only one of these people to have spoken out publicly about the day of Paige’s suicide.

“She was a good person. I really miss her.” Richard said about Paige a few times that afternoon.

More Background

Richard Sample moved to Venice Beach around 1967. He was motivated by the thriving art scene which was becoming more well-known on a national level. At least for those who paid attention to the Art scene.

His father Charlie Sample was already working and living in a Venice studio.

Darlene Valentine remembers Charlie as a landlord of sorts at the Venice Beach studios rented by DeWain Valentine, Richard Sample and Paige Young.

Richard got a studio for himself through his dad and Paige through her connection to Richard.

“Paige liked my father, he made some jewelry for her.”

Paige joined Richard not too long after he moved to Venice Beach. He said he invited her and was thrilled that she moved in.

Records show that Richard was married in 1968 and not to Paige Young. His niece Ellie says Richard actually “leased” the Venice studio to Paige.

I asked Richard if he encountered any of the many artists who became famous out of the Venice Beach art scene (that started in the 1950s with “The Cool School” and the slightly later “Light and Space” or “Finish Fetish” art movement.)

He said “De Wain Valentine had a studio next door to Paige and me.” (See chapter on Pasadena Art Museum appearance with Warhol 1970)

“Valentine was a friend of mine.”

“Another friend, Larry Bell, lived across the street from us, on Market.”

(Turns out Larry Bell had a building next door to Valentine, it was Robert Irwin who lived across the street. I did ask about Irwin and Ruscha but Richard did not recognize those names.)

“We (Paige and I) all used to hang out a lot, with all these (Venice artists) at Barney’s Beanery.”

After I returned from my trip, I did some research and I found quotes from Bell and Valentine in Art magazines.

There were a lot of actors and writers. We all used to hang out at a place called Barney’s Beanery, which was in West Hollywood. It was a local bar, a funky little place right at the end of La Cienega Boulevard where all the galleries were. So after the Tuesday or Thursday night openings, everyone would go up to Barney’s and hang around—there was The Raincheck Room on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood as well.

Larry Bell in Whitewall: Beyond the Walls, Dec. 2019

See chapter on Pasadena Art Museum for much more on DeWain Valentine.

I spoke with Darlene Valentine, the first Mrs. Valentine. When she, her husband and children moved to Venice, California in 1965, they found the studio on Market St.

She remembers him being and eccentric character and a funny man. “You were not supposed to live in the studio, (only practice your art), but many did anyway.”

Cars

Paige owned a yellow Mustang, and Richard owned a red Corvette.

“A guy named Rex Ramsey stole our cars, but Paige got them back.”

Before the interview, I already knew about Rex Ramsey; he’s connected to Mark F. Segal, through renting Segal’s (where Paige lived as his wife in 1963 and 64) house at 4144 Crisp Canyon in Sherman Oaks. Both men spent a career heavily involved with cars: sales, importing and racing. Ramsey designed a successful race car once. He did some stunt driving in Hollywood and is credited in the 1968 hit Disney hit The Love Bug.

Rex Ramsey told me Mark’s family had a series of car dealerships and a towing service business. “They were quite well off,” Ramsey said. Otherwise he said he did not remember Paige Young but maybe he would later. I haven’t been able to reach him since the second phone call when he was unable to talk with me.

Richard shows me a picture of himself decked out head to toe in animal fur, looking like mountain man Jedidiah Smith.

Richard and his father were both quite handsome.

He says that “unfortunately” he has no photos of Paige or paintings by her; he has lost a lot of his possessions and paintings over the years but he is hoping to retrieve some of Paige’s paintings in Santa Maria.

“I never knew Paige to be involved with drugs, except an occasional use of grass.” Richard said that she did sometimes drink alcohol and occasionally “went to clubs in the Marina.”

Richard Sample

And possibly the Raincheck Room per Larry Bell’s quote. And definitely Barney’s Beanery.

After I asked about something else and not hearing my question, Richard said “Paige was basically a very good person, until she got mixed up with Hefner. She went downhill then.”

Lewis Beach Marvin 3rd

was born into the family, “who owned Green Stamps. He was a friend of Paige’s and mine. He introduced me to Robert Carl Cohen who put a lot of my sculptures in his movie Mondo Hollywood.“

Lewis Beach Marvin and the amazing dwelling he put together in the hills of Malibu, is featured in Mondo Hollywood. The movie is a cult film known as an important document of counterculture LA/1960s history.

I did some research and one story says that Lewis Beach Marvin is the young man who gives Jim Morrison a lamb on stage in Miami on May 1st 1969. This can be seen on a video. It’s the concert that resulted in Morrison’s arrest due to allegedly exposing his penis on stage.

Lewis Beach Marvin was a vegan activist WAY before it was a “thing.”

He does appear in a Miami article with a lamb around the time of the Doors concert.I have also read a local Miami man gave Morrison the lamb.

The Miami arrest hanging over his head is supposedly one reason Jim Morrison left for Paris where he fatally overdosed on heroin. He was already in bad health due to alcohol abuse.

Shortly after I returned from California, I rented Mondo Hollywood on Amazon.

I was unable to specifically identify Richard’s sculptures in the film–a sculptor named Valerie Porter is one of the “main characters” and the movie is heavy on a variety of her sculptures and many sculptures and structures.

I did see an ending credit:

Moonshadow sculpture: Richard Lauren Sample..

According to Richard:

Peter Gowland Playboy and Glamour Photographer

and Paige had met a few years before her appearance as a Playboy centerfold. Paige had already modeled for Gowland several times. This checks out with a few pre-centerfold photos of Paige taken by Gowland. These can be found on the internet.

Peter Gowland is the one who suggested and encouraged Paige to try out for Playboy; he submitted her photos as she recounted in 1969 to newspaper reporters.

I knew Paige mentioned in a few 1969 interviews that “my photographer friend suggested” the idea and he submitted her photos to Playboy. I did not previously mention this to Richard.

Gowland called Richard, in 1974, looking for Paige because he hadn’t heard from or seen her for a while. He called Richard back some time later to tell him that Paige had committed suicide. Peter did not tell Richard the method that Paige used to kill herself, Sample said to me.

Sample is quoted in Daily Mail story as saying he was told by Gowland that it was an overdose.

Richard says he opened Eros Gallery in Westwood in the late 60s.

He can’t remember the location beyond that.

The next several photos are from Playboy magazine November 1968, taken by Peter Gowland.

Richard and I went through them .

Richard said this photo above shows him helping Paige carry one of her paintings into his Eros Gallery.

Richard says the seated woman on the left is “Mrs. Burke, my partner in Eros Gallery.” Mrs. Burke was a local patroness of the Arts. He said that Peter Gowland is the man in between Mrs. Burke and Paige.

He may be mistaken, if it is Gowland, I don’t know who took the shot. Richard said Peter’s wife, who is the co-owner of their photography business, Alice Gowland was not there that day.

Richard said never met her.

According to Richard, this photo of Paige running with her dog Joshua was taken at the Malibu Colony.

Richard said he has no idea who any of these people are at the cookout or in the room with Paige painting. He doesn’t recognize the location. These may or may not be real friends of Paige’s.

Sometimes young people were hired to stand in as “friends” for a Playboy centerfold shoot. Connie Kreski is one.

Richard said that when he was living with Paige he “never questioned where she was going, what she was doing” or with “whom she was doing it.”

“And she never questioned me. That is just the way the relationship was.”

Malibu fire

“Me and Harry Gesner went to Paige’s house during the Malibu fire (he’s not sure which year in the 1960s.) and hosed everything down. Paige’s house didn’t burn but everything around it did.”

I then asked a couple of questions about Paige’s family.

Was there ever an indication that Paige had grown up with a grandmother (Virginia Young LaRocca) who was a Christian Science practitioner/ 1st Reader in the Church for decades?

Richard answered, “Nope, nope, not at all.”

Richard said that Paige never talked about her childhood in the SFV. She never mentioned her family. He did not know that her birth name was Diana Cotterell or that she was married to Mark F. Segal. She never said she used Marvin Mitchelson as her lawyer, Richard had never heard of Mitchelson anyway.

Richard said he met Paige’s sister (Constance/Connie) one time only, when Paige drove him to a visit with her. He said he doesn’t “think that they had a close relationship.”

Richard looked quite exhausted so I ended the interview for the day. I felt bad about telling him too much of Paige’s background that he never knew.

He said it didn’t bother him.

He shared one last thing:

“I introduced Paige to Tony Dow, a good friend of mine. He drove a Porsche. He liked my Vette. He lived in the Valley. “

And Tony purchased some of Richard’s art .

From an interview with Richard: The Boise Weekly, where Richard was living Early 2007.

After parting ways with Maria Nicolosi, Sample married 1969 Playboy Playmate Paige Young who later died at her L.A home of a sleeping pill overdose. An artist in her own right, Young’s impressionistic portrait of Sample hangs in Gallery 8.

Sample was born on Friday the 13th of November 1936, a “triple Scorpio” by astrological accounts. “I have my Sun, Moon and Mercury in Scorpio,” he says, which may explain his resourcefulness and intensity. The legend of Scorpio tells of a scorpion sent by the immortal huntress Artemis to slay Orion, the great hunter. Scorpio, ever resourceful, fulfilled the deed for the goddess and was given a place in the night sky as his reward.

“I may not be a famous artist, but I am a successful one,” Sample said. And prolific. To date, he has completed and sold 2,761 paintings and is currently at work on six more.

The following is the Entire interview with Richard Sample when he still lived in Idaho and opened a gallery in a storage unit.

Just across the highway from the airport in Hailey, where Gulf Stream jets blast off regularly, lies the South Wood Self Storage Facility. Row upon row of identical containers are filled with furnishings and cargo, all except for locker No. 8, otherwise known as “Gallery 8,” a space used by artist Richard Lauran Sample. Above the door reads a sign: “Art Patrons Association of Idaho,” which Sample refers to as “a group dedicated to the arts, music and literature.” Just inside is the face of the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby, “… wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door.” A cat named Turpentine studies the ghost-like face in a jar and then ranges freely through the menagerie of paintings and sculptures by Sample that fill Gallery 8: abstracts, Westerns and magical realism paintings, canvases of Batman and numerous other examples of skilled craftsmanship and determined artistic vision. There is an unfinished ivory-handled knife, a tidy collection of cobalt blue glassware and a series of clocks marking time at various Air Force bases across the United States, including Area 51. Gallery 8 is a long way from the Bel-Air, Calif., mansion Sample once called home.

Ever since Sample’s mother, Virginia, posed for the Columbia Pictures torch lady painting, Sample has lived in and around the glamour of Hollywood. During the 1960s, he was featured on several television shows, including the Jack Bailey show Queen for a Day, on which lucky American housewives were given makeovers and European vacations. “I sold 75 pieces from [the notoriety of] that show,” he recalls. Over the years, people like Raymond Burr, Edgar G. Robinson, and Tony Dow of Leave it to Beaver fame have purchased Sample’s work. “I traded one of my Castle paintings to Hollywood stunt man Charlie Wilcox—a family friend who worked on the movie Ben Hur and also did stunt work on The Creature from the Black Lagoon—for a small Picasso in the 1970s,” says Sample. “I should have held onto the Picasso.”

Today, Sample’s studio contains 108 paintings, all of which he has produced within the last year, while restoring antique oil paintings and repairing artwork in the Sun Valley area to make ends meet.

“I paint fast,” he says. “I’m an insomniac, so I rest. I don’t sleep. I’ll lie down on that couch there and have dreams and visions.” Like Salvador Dali, who also experimented with the state between wakefulness and dreaming, Sample creates surrealist landscapes. His are populated with the artifacts of his youth spent in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri, where he pumped water from a well and milked 13 cows each day before walking to school. For sustenance, he hunted and fished the nearby James River, named after Jesse James. During a stint as a ranger in the U.S. Army’s Third Missile Command, Sample was part of a three-man team that fired the 32-foot-long Honest John Rocket.

“It was fully manual'” he says. “We could hit a moving tank at 15 miles.” He also painted mess halls in the military.

Sample’s surrealism features whisky jugs and mushrooms, mechanical parts and hillside shacks. A recent work, “Lunar Reactor,” has taken hillbilly motifs and expanded them upon the cosmos. The oil painting shines under several coats of deep varnish that the artist has poured over sections of the piece. “When I am finished, there will be a three-dimensional effect. You will be able to see around the individual brush strokes.”

A similar fascination with technique developed some years ago into Sample’s black and white “Castle Paintings,” which he describes as “oil etchings.” These medieval ramparts above calm rivers are painted using brushes only a few hairs thick with paint strokes made in exactly five directions, similar to the etching procedure used in the production of the U.S. dollar bill.

Sample worked alongside his father at many trades during his youth: making trick poker tables, saddles, doing bronze work and cabinetry. The father and son also ran the West Coast Mint, pounding out thousands of custom bronze medallions under a 350-ton die press, including one of a farm field with a rocket ship commemorating the POMO Air Force Installation in California. They later built a bronze foundry in Pasa Robles from the ground up, which would reconstruct Remington sculptures to exact specifications. An accomplished gunsmith and saddle-maker, Charles Sample designed and built the spectacular silver saddles used in the Pasadena Rose Bowl New Year’s Day Parade. He also introduced his son to the magic and glamour of Hollywood.

“My father made a solid silver telephone and platinum garter clips for Mae West,” Sample says. “She tried to give him a Deusenberg, but he turned her down because the car didn’t have a spare tire.” Sample worked extensively for movie star Bo Derek and made gold leaf and wooden jewelry for Willem de Kooning’s wife, Elaine. De Kooning collected Sample’s work and corresponded with him for some time in letters. Sample keeps the correspondences in boxes with color snapshots and other personal memorabilia. One photo from 1973 was taken at the Marion Davies Mansion in Bel-Air. In it, Sample stands beside a gingerbread castle he made for the Christmas/birthday party of Charlton Heston.

“I put 7,000 pieces of candy in that cake,” he recalls. Nearby stands J. Paul Getty and Sample’s one-time paramour, Maria Nicolosi.

Sample reminisces about the life he shared with Nicolosi for seven years in the mansion, which was built by William Randolph Hearst for his lover, silent film star Marion Davies.

“The place was unbelievable,” he recalls. “It had every tropical tree you could imagine. They used to shoot Tarzan movies in the back yard. There were waterfalls and caves. The swimming pool was the largest in the United States and ran like a snake through the property. Vincent Price collected my paintings. He would stop in from across the street and have tea with us.”

According to Sample, the patriarch of the Nicolosi clan, sculptor Joseph Nicolosi, an artist of international significance, held a 50 percent interest in the Park Plaza Hotel in New York City. He had passed away before Sample took up residence in the mansion with his daughter.

After parting ways with Maria Nicolosi, Sample married 1969 Playboy Playmate Paige Young who later died at her L.A home of a sleeping pill overdose. An artist in her own right, Young’s impressionistic portrait of Sample hangs in Gallery 8. (Richard married Daryl if you remember, in 1968. The stayed married for a few years.)

Sample was born on Friday the 13th of November 1936, a “triple Scorpio” by astrological accounts. “I have my Sun, Moon and Mercury in Scorpio,” he says, which may explain his resourcefulness and intensity. The legend of Scorpio tells of a scorpion sent by the immortal huntress Artemis to slay Orion, the great hunter. Scorpio, ever resourceful, fulfilled the deed for the goddess and was given a place in the night sky as his reward.

“I may not be a famous artist, but I am a successful one,” Sample said. And prolific. To date, he has completed and sold 2,761 paintings and is currently at work on six more.

Sample also inherited a collection of books from his father published by the “photographer on horseback,” L.A. Huffman, who traveled the West in the 1870s. A book of glass plate prints and accompanying stories have provided the heart of Sample’s work for many years. He renders the photographs in sepia-toned oils. “There is a story behind every one of these paintings,” he points out. One is of a prairie Indian burial on stilts, entitled “Spirit Poles.” Another represents a self-portrait of Huffman, painted, as they all are, on maximum density particle board, which Sample says will never warp or bend. “These will last a thousand years,” he says. “You can wash them with soap and water.”

His decision to work in “permanence” came after working in the art of restoration at the L.A. County Art Museum, where several of his cardboard collages were hung in the 1960s.

“I’m self-taught,” he explains, while extolling the virtues of Ralph Mayer’s The Artist’s Handbook of Materials and Techniques.

“I have had three copies of this book over the years. It is the best book ever written for artists wanting to learn. It has taught me permanence. It continues to teach me the chemistry and permanence of paint,” he says.

Sample proudly displays a diploma for an Honorary Doctorate in the Arts from California’s Polytechnic State University, which he earned after completing a rigorous examination on his knowledge of things such as paint chemistry.

Yet Sample’s interests and talents range far beyond the fine arts and include herbology, anthropology, astrology and rock-collecting, to name a few. Against one wall, beside a tableau of religious icons and tribal mementos, is a case filled with meteorites.

Among the artifacts Sample has collected as an amateur archeologist are two nearly perfectly round black stones he found in a dried river bottom near Shoshone. He explains that the natives used them as weapons at one time, bound in hard leather at the end of a battle axe. Sample is incorporating each of the balls into meter-high white plaster abstract sculptures that will resonate with deep history and contemporary sculptural forms. “I also practice Tai Chi and read quantum physics,” he says, “including just about anything Albert Einstein wrote.”

Sample’s studies in physics pertain to certain technical projects he plans to undertake with the U.S. military, projects he would rather not discuss publicly. Relying on friends from NASA, he has plans to install a live video feed of nearby heavenly bodies to a televison set in his studio in the near future.

Even in Idaho, where he continues restoration, cabinetry and painting projects for actors Bruce Willis, John Larroquette and others, Sample still has the occasional brush with fame.

“One night at my brother Bill’s, Muffet Hemingway,” who is Margaux Hemingway’s sister, Joan, “came driving straight across the yard and right over the Christmas tree,” Sample says. “Muffet walked into the house and started munching on a crab leg, waved to herself in the glass window and then got into her car and drove away back across the yard. My brother came out and said, ‘Who’s the chick grazin’ in the kitchen?'”

Sample will auction off some of his work in spring of 2008 and give 15 percent of the proceeds to the Parkinson’s Foundation. “All of these 108 paintings will be sold in two days,” he says. “The last show I had, 1,500 people showed up at the Sage Brush Arena in Hailey. My place is always open to students and lovers of art,” he says.