85岁高龄，圣达菲艺术家 保罗Milosevich still won't look backward to pick out his finest works.

Milosevich prefers to repeat architect Frank Lloyd Wright's answer when he was asked to choose his favorite building.

"Oh, my dear boy, the next one," Wright said.

Such forward thinking might explain why Milosevich has donated all his personal papers, including the daily diary he kept for 50 years, to Texas Tech University's Southwest 集合.

Some of Milosevich's writings are 在克罗地亚n shorthand, a technique he learned during an impoverished boyhood in Trinidad, Colo.

A Texas Tech executive says the language difference will be no obstacle on a campus with plenty of linguistic talent to decipher important primary documents.

"It didn't take us a nanosecond to decide we wanted the personal papers of a world-renowned artist like 保罗Milosevich," said Monte Monroe, the Texas state historian and archivist of Texas Tech's Southwest 集合.

Milosevich plays down his contribution, other than calling it a small step for protecting 环境.

"All of it would have ended up in a landfill otherwise," he said of 40 boxes of notes, diaries, slides and recordings that have gone to the same university where he once felt uncomfortable in his work.

He taught art at Texas Tech from 1970-76, then made the move of a lifetime. Milosevich gave up a tenured position with a guaranteed paycheck to try to make a living selling 他的艺术作品.

He had never quite fit with the rest of the faculty. Tech's other art professors favored abstract or conceptual works far different from Milosevich's realistic drawings and 绘画.

"If I had stayed at Tech, I might have gotten lazy. Freelancing opened up different 米洛舍维奇说.

An impromptu late-night supper with a celebrity gave him the confidence to leave academia 后面.

One night while he was still working at Texas Tech, Milosevich approached singer and 词曲作者汤姆?. Hall after a concert in Lubbock. Milosevich gave Hall one of his pencil drawings, a '49 Dodge sedan in a big empty lot.

"I introduced myself and told him what I'd drawn reminded me of one of his songs, though now I don't remember which one," Milosevich said.

霍尔喜欢他所看到的. He invited Milosevich to join him for a bowl of chili. 一段友谊 and business association began that night.

Hall hired Milosevich to illustrate the cover of his album The Rhymer and Other Five 和二聚体. The artwork depicts the blue-collar world Milosevich came from. 他画了 a Levi's denim jacket draped over an empty chair, a pair of weathered boots resting 附近的.

Thousands of other clients would follow after Milosevich connected with Hall. 许多 were in the music industry. Milosevich was commissioned for more than 100 charcoal portraits of inductees to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Other customers came from academia, education and sports, especially golf, one of Milosevich的痴迷.

 The youngest of eight children, he grew up in a farmhouse at the edge of Trinidad, 然后是煤炭开采中心. His parents had immigrated to Trinidad from the same village 在克罗地亚.

The Milosevich home didn't have electricity or indoor bathroom facilities. 作为一个孩子 of the Great Depression, Milosevich knew enough about money to wear out a pencil before asking his dad for a dime to buy a new one.

Young Paul milked goats in one of his first jobs. He was more enthusiastic about caddying at a golf course, an early inspiration for his interest in drawing.

He created a comic book at age 14 about the life and times of golfer Ben Hogan. In turn, Hogan would one day become a fan of Milosevich's 绘画, calling the artist 一个了不起的天才."

Milosevich says his first big break came at Trinidad State Junior College, where Arthur Roy Mitchell was one of his teachers.

Today, 绘画 by the teacher and his star pupil grace the A.R. Mitchell Museum of Western Art 在特立尼达的大街上.

Milosevich left Trinidad to complete bachelor's and master's degrees at California State University, Long Beach. He worked as a campus janitor to pay his way. 之一 his 绘画 is of the brooms he used to clean a building with 18 classrooms, restrooms 还有一个礼堂.

Milosevich then landed a teaching job at Odessa College in Texas. 他的第一步是 和看门人交朋友.

He went to work at Texas Tech five years later. The students were terrific, the campus 政治排水. This was when he began writing in his diary each day.

Monroe, the Texas state historian, says Milosevich's story probably will interest scholars a hundred years from now.

Milosevich is fixated on the present. He still paints three or four times a week, more if he has a deadline.

He calls his career pure luck. The artist who survived the Depression, milked goats and cleaned bathroom stalls learned never to take himself too seriously.