By Barbara Jorgen Nance

I've been blessed with several mentors in my cartoonist career. At the top of the list, wearing a star-studded crown that reaches to the moon is Walt Stanchfield of Disney fame. If you were to Google Walt Stanchfield, you'd read about the two Walts that made Disney famous. Walt Disney and Walt Stanchfield, whose career goes back to the earliest of animated films.

Walt and I didn't meet until both of us left Los Angeles and moved up the coast to the Santa Ynez Valley. Walt beat me to it. Sherwood and I lived on the coast a few years before moving over the hill to Santa Ynez. I had already been working for Animated Cartoon Productions in Santa Barbara on educational health films. At the time I was also an apprentice to Bill Ziegler of Mary Worth comic strip. After moving over the hill to Santa Ynez, I started working with Alice Entertainment (International). I just loved Alice from our first meeting. She had purple hair and I was always tempted to dye my hair purple, but didn't. Would I have felt different about being a cartoonist if I had purple hair? Then I met Walt Stanchfield and he was mostly bald and I don't think purple hair would have impressed him. Walt Stanchfield and I were both fine artists as well as cartoonists. We had gallery shows together all through the 1990s. We became great fiends and spent a lot of time together, along with Walt's wife Dee and my husband Sherwood.

Walt's whimsy was contagious, even to my husband Sherwood. Walt and I were having one of many show openings at the Gallery Los Olivos. Our theme was all Ocean Art. Sherwood walked in with a bowl of live goldfish. He set the bowl down in the middle of our reception table and announced, GǣThe live entertainment has arrived!Gǥ The cameramen were there from Disney and we all had a memorable time.

Nowadays, my cartooning carries on right here on Grant County Beat and beyond. Most of my art has a whimsical take to it. I can't help myself. I just want to pass along a feel-good smile that reminds me of Walt. Quote from Walt: GǣYou must create! The injunction of life is to create or perish. Good physical and mental conditioning is necessary to do this. Remember this: The creative energy that created the universe, created you and its creative power is in you, motivating you always in the direction of creative expression.Gǥ

Walt's formula: GǣImpression minus expression equals depression. Our impressions cry out to be expressed on paper, canvas, in music, in poetry and animated film of course.Gǥ The list is infinite, like your imagination. Ponder on.