In November 1928, William Coons was hired by the City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power as a member of the survey crew for the proposed Colorado River Aqueduct.

Due to a delay in the start of the project, William Coons was temporarily assigned to field survey work in eastern California’s Owens Valley, where Los Angeles had large land and water holdings.

The family moved back and forth between Culver City in Los Angeles and the Owens Valley towns of Bishop, Big Pine and Independence.

Unconsciously, the observing eye of the artist within was storing away an inventory of memory, of the sea in all its capricious shades, the play of light or shadow on water.

Aware of Richard’s notable track accomplishments as reported in the local newspaper, and as an athlete of some note himself, Clunie struck up a conversation about sports with the younger Coons.

It took Richard, Kent, Robert Clunie and at least two USFS rangers almost three months to remove more than thirty years of accumulated possessions stored deep within the crevices of the granite boulders surrounding the camp.

Because of Clunie’s lengthy career in the high country and the extensive collection of art that it inspired, Richard was obsessed with similar high mountain scenes, “where you find the granite peaks with snow and glaciers, white bark and lodgepole pines and the wonderful north face snowfields, the places you had to hike to—not the ones at the end of the road.” The scenery of the Alpine Zone, at 11,000 feet and above, was Richard's favorite to paint, so he was away from home much of the summer.

Unlike his mentor, Robert Clunie, who hired Glacier Pack Station to take him into the mountains, Richard carried a large external frame backpack, topped with a small easel, rolled canvas, an umbrella, his paints and brushes.

I was sitting under my big umbrella, not getting wet, but hailstones were hitting the meadow grass and boulders and bouncing two feet in the air like a million jumping grasshoppers.

I found myself down in the lowest spot I could find, between the big boulders, sitting on my foam rubber cushion and huddled in my poncho with the rain coming down in buckets and lightning and thunder banging all around."

It is estimated that he painted at least 3,000 realist and impressionist canvases of primarily the Sierra Nevada, but also classic California landscape scenes and oceanscapes, from Monterey to Laguna.

Following his untimely death from cancer in 2003, his wife, Wynne Benti, publisher of outdoor books at Spotted Dog Press, continued to keep the gallery open.