Daylight comes early in the Midi, unlike my native Holland; the sky over Provence is always a clear transparent flood of ultramarine hues. Every moment of sunlight is precious to me. This morning I rose with the swallows as they drifted down from the air currents upon which they sleep. Descending the staircase leading to the café below my room, I sat beside the large window near the doorway. I enjoyed the feel of the warm morning sun as it cast highlights upon the pages of the newspaper. The light falling off the deckled edges of the paper traveled along its chosen path to the porcelain vase filled with lavender and wildflowers. Flecks of purple and fine yellow dust gathered at its base.

After finishing the newspaper, I folded it neatly and lifted the small cup of coffee to my lips, straining the last drops of sepia syrup between the hairs of my mustache and my mouth. Tiny pearls of cream and coffee fell upon the unbleached muslin tablecloth. Seizing my paint box, easel and a size thirty canvas I exited the cafe, my destination, the golden fields below the Abbey of Montmajour. Sunflowers stood on top of emerald staffs, swaying to the cadence of the angel's breath that blew across the plains of rice and wheat. Savannas of sunflowers floated in a quilted sea of rolling amber grain, creating vistas that would have inspired Corot, Mauve or Millet.

He has received citations from U.S. Senator Herbert Kohl and Former Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson for his dedication to the visual arts, and education in Wisconsin. In 1995, President Clinton invited Coffman to the White House to attend the prestigious National Medal of Arts awards ceremony. That same year, he was awarded a fellowship at the Lacoste School of Art in France were he taught and conducted research for his novel on Vincent van Gogh. In 2001 Terrence Coffman received the Frank Kirtpatrick Award from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation and he is the 2008 recipient of the Laird Art Leadership Award from the Melvin Laird Foundation.

Coffman's work has received several awards and has been exhibited in numerous exhibitions, including shows at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Lee Nordness Gallery in New York, the Milwaukee Art Museum and the Tory Folliard Gallery located in the Historic Third Ward of Milwaukee.

As a singer/songwriter, he has performed at nightclubs and music venues in Wisconsin, Virginia, Maryland and Washington D.C. He has recorded two albums of traditional and contemporary acoustic songs. His most recent CD entitled "Songs from Center Avenue Studio" is a collection of original songs about family, outlaws, lovers and a dog named Blue.

Coffman is the author of a fictional novel entitled, A Walk Through the Wheatfields, The Missing Journals of Vincent van Gogh, based on the life of the Post-Impressionist painter.