I never learned anything the first time.

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.

Ocean of Min

I love comics. I always have. I love how they take your mind on trips and how the art makes you transform as you take it in. It has a perfect quality to it. I hope my art has that effect. My lines change your reality a tiny bit. That textures are now important to you. That you see somehting new and amzing and it makes you think of one of my paintings. I know that is silly but that is how I feel from reading comics after all these years.

a shovel and barefoot

I have been making for longer then some of the artist I have met in the last year. I have paintings older then a few of them and their talent blows me away. I’m not in anyway wanting to be the big fish in the small pond. I like finding equals. They push me to be better. Everyne needs the push…if you don’t have a hero…you are not looking hard enough. Drugs show you the inside but never really the outside.

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I guess what I learned this year so fare is the art world is bullshit and the artists are the lessons. Galleries will not give you gifts of inspiration…..flyers for artists website on corkboard are the main vein……keep making kiddos.

The show and the reverse world

I met great people…so many great people. I feel a new kind of inspiration. family-ties4371-prints

The crown of feels

Finding focus in the new year.

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.  To see a new world inside and to be able to make it a real thing.

 

Deep Sleepers

Once there was a boy and he loved paint. It was all his heart wanted and then he met people and he became a time painter.

 

Painter Files

La Gama

We all just want to make good work and make a living at it. A forest of paper and canvas with skies full of clouds of inspiration and rivers of coffee and tea. The spirit animals of many a mind are in the nail bed tapping on the walls as silence is madness.

I loved this so much. It is the big new piece I made before this show in January. I have so much work always but it never feels like enough. I imagine that is normal.

Painter files 11/25/16

A lot of things going one this month coming up. I’m really hoping it all works out perfectly.

Mostly just trying to figure out what I want to teach.

 

I am a space rock

I wash in the middle of thinking about this day and I got sidelined. That happens some times. I get in the groove and then something reminds me of my Marley and I’m taken back. I don’t know that I’m ever going to be … great. I don’t know that I really want to be. Alec is so wonderful and she sees me drift and helps me when I come back. I have this way with me that wants to be here but is traveling through my timeline. That pain is my own personal magnet. It is a planet and I am a space rock. I’m working on living better in the now than being lost in my time.

 

I’m proud of this one. I feel like I’m getting so much better each time. Also all most at 100 subs. Please subscribe if you enjoy my videos. When I reach 100 I get my own personal web address rather than that long generic one they give.

later

Jaws