While others bear souls, radical thoughts and dirty pictures on the Internet, John Horne brings passionate pastels and watercolors of ballerinas to the World Wide Web. The Alpharetta-based (Georgia USA) painter and photographer has combined his scenes of dancers in motion with the expertise of Dallas-based website builder David Wilson to create a line of computer desktop wallpapers based on his work.

"I'm ecstatic, who wouldn't be," says Horne, "think about it, somebody in Moscow or Belgrade will get your artwork. If that's not exciting, I don't know what is." Calling the combination of art, commerce and technology the 'cross-training' of art, the artwork for the wallpapers are an offspring of Mr. Horne's own captivation with the art, craft, grace and splendor of dance. A fascination which he not only enjoys as an observer and director of the Warsaw-Ocee Community Arts Center, but as a dance student for the last five years. Horne believes that his studies in dance allow him to create a synergy between his models, his studies and the works that appear on the canvas.

"It's impossible to render dance properly without understanding the process," says Horne. "There's a synergy between . . . the dancers I paint and my own experiences as the student. It all works together." Dancing has become an exercise companion of his love of art, an earlier infatuation that eventually led him to quit a seventeen year career in the furniture business in order to devote his full energies to it. A native of Binghamton, New York and a graduate of St. John Fisher College in with double majors in photography and pre-law, Mr. Horne gravitated from photography to other mediums, including acrylics, charcoal pencils and inks on rice paper as well as the pastels and watercolors that dominate the portraits used in the Dream Chaser series. And these enduring infatuations began a workout on the 'net when Mr. Wilson, the creator of DanceArt.com approached Mr. Horne with a plan to use his artwork in wallpapers other products on his website. Since then, Horne paints and photographs while Mr. Wilson creates the electronic versions and puts together the channels for selling the goods. "I'm the artist," says Horne; "he's the artist-scientist."

Though other artists have not completely embraced the Internet for fear of copyright infringement, Mr. Horne takes on high-tech with little hesitation. In fact, he encourages others to walk on the electronic waters and promote their crafts "I'm always being asked what if somebody 'appropriates' my art, and how I would feel about it," says Mr. Horne. "Look at the opposite, people who view your artwork and don't want to own it. The answer is if my work is not being seen, what is its purpose? Hopefully, some people will buy it will get the good resolutions. The people who are interested in owning and appreciating the actual work would purchase it."

Horne is confident that he'll succeed and believes that others in the art world will embrace this 'cross-training.' "People will get comfortable with the process. The more artists that take advantage of the Internet, the better off we are." And Horne has grabbed the electronic bull by the tail. Since November, he has served as the administrator of the Dance-Ballet Mailing List in addition to working on the wallpapers, displaying his pieces at Roswell's Gallery 5, and running Warsaw-Ocee, which is housed in the historic old Warsaw Elementary School building. As plans to expand into posters and other product lines are already underway, Horne's eyes are beaming with wonder at the promise that it all holds. "When you really stop to think about it," says Horne; "the possibilities are essentially limitless."

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