I see all these great storytellers spinning webs. It is beautiful and I worry I’m more visual. So I make my films and my paintings. I hope they are fun or at least pulling you like Cthulu.I feel like causing madness could be fun at first but sucks as the decades go by. Not a great superpower for the long term.
So I have been making like crazy and dancing between art locations.
I am but a man with a brush. I dream and sleep. I’m good at both if I may brag? A lot of that art comes from dreaming. The lucidity of waking up and running to a pen and paper is my shining achievement.
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In my life, I have ignored a lot of life lessons people had given to me at first. As I have gotten older I have to know now to open my mind and ears. Not all voices are good advice from other people. Most advice is less about me than it is about people taking to themselves. Also, sadly lots of the advice people have given me would only work if I was a white dude. People don’t like to admit that what works for white dudes doesn’t work to strive in life for people of color. I’m pointing this out as Afro -Carribean-Latino man in Black history month who is 35. So I have lived for a bit and tried this advice many times and mostly failed. Not to say I have not had little victories. I’m here …doing all these paintings with all my fans worldwide but as look at Jean-Michael Basquiat and see his struggles as a man of color being a maker and I see parallels. I don’t want that life but I wonder how does a man of color makes it big in the art world other than to meet an icon and then climb to equality? Is that even equality? I say, Andy Warhol and people, nod their heads ad I say Basquiat and I get back blank faces. It is disheartening. I think of Baldwin who made it on his own and how much waring he had to do and all I think to do is prep myself for a fight to be heard and seen as an equal.
Bloody fists can be paintbrushes too.
It will be sad to see you go but staying and not seeing is worse.
I had to stop watching the news for a few days to find my focus. The newspaper I feel has more heart to it. Being able to put it to words has a strength to it, a passion. I remember being a kiddo and finding these “choose your adventure books” in the 80’s. After I would finish them, I would feel superpowered with creativity. I would draw all the things I had imagined, most had nothing to do with what I was reading. It’s funny to read a dictionary and imagine a new comic book. Â To see a new world inside and to be able to make it a real thing.
Happy early New Year. I feel like good things are coming for us because we will make it happen for each other as well as ourselves. We are so epic and we are hope and love and that is the lifeblood of creativity.
My demons are big. They are faceless and yet look like me every time I look in my dirty mirror. They have made me a hell of a fighter. I remember being a kid and not knowing how I felt about sadness and anger. I remember they just came on one day. It had nothing to do with the people who were around me over even the place I was in. I was the prisoner on Avalon and no one would ever be able to see.  It was a labyrinth and I learned to paint sunshine and flowers on the walls and make it my home.  I learned to be happy and calm without depending on others. Learning how to be creative without the sadness was the hardest part. The pain was my drive and when it lessened I felt like a fraud for a bit. I don’t know how I changed out of those robes. Nakedness is a good word. It was the definition of how I felt until I grew to love my nakedness. So raw and so tender like a 20-year sunburn.  I stopped being Jae Jae and let myself be Jawara. I grew my hair out again and let myself be who I felt like on the inside, a new outside. The journey of a painter guys is not an easy road. it never really gets to be an easy road. But it is so deep and empowering once you hit the ground and make your mark.