i was born with the gift of dexterity. i didn’t color in coloring books. i drew on the inside front and back covers.
my mom gave me the brown paper shopping bags ripped and turned inside out to draw on. i filled those with crayon, marker, and pencil drawings of things i saw on tv or other marketing. i learned to draw copying disney, warner brother’s, mad magazine, hanna barbara, comics and the beatles.
exhausting the weekly supply of shopping bags in a couple hours, my mom supplied large rolls of brown paper for me to draw on. drawing on the large paper, across the kitchen floor, was a fantastic way to practice drawing and learning to see.
teased at age 10 for being “one of those,” with a limp wrist gesture, by my big brothers friends, because the still life paintings i painted were getting a lot of attention at the local cultural center, i became a closet artist. i didn’t know what “one of those” were but i knew i didn’t want to be teased. furthermore my dad didn’t respect art. he thought it was worthless. age 11, standing in front of jasper johns’ “map” painting, at the philadelphia museum of art, smoke was coming out of my dad’s ears. he’d had it with the modern art wing. he said, “anybody can do this crap, this isn’t art.” i was thinking, no, you’re wrong dad. these things are amazing!! i remember being puzzled by his very strong emotional response.
as an art student, undergrad and grad, i continued learning about art, the history of art and art concepts, by copying. copying modern art, professors, visiting artists, and peers. anything that i assimilated or fancied or resonated with me. i was introduced and began practicing einstein’s idea of, 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. not because of a “genius” label, but as a working process.
I am 55 years young and still learning by copying. my process hasn’t really changed. my paintings/drawings/objects come from painting/drawing/making things, the bliss of hard work and hands on research with learning as you go experimentation. i’m investigating in-coming information, spatial metaphors and technical processes. i’m reluctant to reduce the subject to what the source material or references are because that is something i want to be as wide open as possible.
"i’m only interested in fundamentally revolutionizing and transforming your entire being. there is no me and there is no you. there is just one consciousness that is ever expanding as the infinite possibility that is cascading as the singularity in the multiplicity of form." Sri Sri Sri Spankneesh Ji.
my paintings are alive with the aliveness of being alive and will help dust off your bling revealing the wholeness within.