Works

The Six of Cups mural was created in the Spring of '23 for Kathryn and Lewis Shepherd. The mural sits in conversation with the early modernist visions of the Italian Futurists, Russian Constructivists, and German Expressionists while evoking the new world origins that inspired the creation of piece in its original Washington, D.C. home.

Succubus - A 21st Century She-Devil personifying the automated collective consciousness vampirizing the soul of the individual. She is playing with her cellphone, a man bound helplessly to the screen. From her pineal gland to his crotch area extends an ambiguous energy beam. She towers over an archaic fantasy city. Her skin is embedded with circuity, and she wears a sort of chrome armor bikini. It is at once an allegory for humanity's relationship with the internet, and a satire of old courtship games invented with social media and smartphones.

The painting was presented at Burning Man 2018. It was art for the 'I, Robot' Theme of the festival and was installed in the "Man Pavillion" at the three o'clock position of the pedestal on which the Man was mounted.

This is a series of watercolors I began while staying in Tokyo in the Fall of 2015. They are what I could do with watercolors and ink pens of various sorts (I was especially enthralled with the brush pens available everywhere in Tokyo). I would improvise something on one page of a small watercolor block in a few hours and then start another. About 20 were completed in all, and I later came to call them "Acceptance", because the improvisational nature of the drawing felt like a kind of self-acceptance that really differed from the exacting standards of the large scale "Crossroads of Curiosity" I had createdin 2014-15.

Burlesque. A 'Bestiary of the Burlesque'. This painting celebrates the strip joint, cabaret, and exotic dance club while satirizing it exaggeratedly. The painting expresses moral outrage while fetishistically lingering indulgently on every regrettable tresspass of common decency. Executed in 2015-16, the painting initially derived from a sketch made late one night at Canter's Delicatessen (24 hr Jewish Deli in Los Angeles) in 1991 .

Torture Garden is one of the painting/collages I was creating around 2013 that is a hybrid of original painting, original photography and collage elements that was developed through an iterative process of photoshop (digital collage), large format printing, and acrylic painting.

Believe it or not, this is my one and only effort to make anything resembling a comic strip. "Start small" is advice I just can't seem to ever listen to. Nope, I had to start with a graphic novel of a very complex sci-fi classic, Philip K. Dick's, "Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch" (one of my all time favorite books!). I didn't quite get as far as finishing one chapter. I guess it's nothing to brag about, but I think I was off to a good start, and, who knows, may return to it if the stars align . . .

Chemical Imbalance is a small oil painting, part of the "Illuminations" series I completed between 2008-2016 of highly detailed (what I would characterize as "medieval" or at least monkish or goliardish - as the case may be) paintings. Part of the 'Illuminations' collection displayed in Berlin in 2012 and at the Institute of Crazyology in 2021. Chemical Imbalance is one of 8 glowing lightpanels, originally suspended in a dark room and generating their own light to cast their likenesses over the space around them..

Conception is an expression of feelings through a process of elucidation of abstract forms and spontaneous visions into tangible composition that is representational, that is to say, composed of recognizable visual elements. The work grapples with cause and effect, action and reaction, centralized in the figure of the Jellyfish. Here, the Jellyfish represents primeval life, denizens of the Cambrian depths of prehistoric seas, unlikely inheritors of wasted oceans that through pollution and resulting ecological imbalance might become bacterial slime pits resplendent with scintillating Medusozoa. Entrhalled in these metaphoric tendrils are humn thoughts and feelings trapped in their time like insects in amber. Lust and anger undulate with sensual intertwinings in an intoxicated dance of self-destruction. Part of the 'Illuminations' collection displayed in Berlin in 2012 and at the Institute of Crazyology in 2021. Conception is one of 8 glowing lightpanels, originally suspended in a dark room and generating their own light to cast their likenesses over the space around them.

Gallow's Humor is part of the 'Illuminations' collection displayed in Berlin in 2012 and at the Institute of Crazyology in 2021. The painting is one of 8 glowing lightpanels, originally suspended in a dark room and generating their own light to cast their likenesses over the space around them.

The Human Tree, featuring its strange figures sawing down the tree is emblematic to me of the experience of quitting painting. The completion of this painting has come to represent a renewal, like a film played in reverse of Roman soldiers that, by working their saw, are causing a fallen tree to be rejoined, stand up and grow once again.

Not long ago I was contacted on Myspace by a chihuahua. I no longer recall this dog’s name, but just to protect the 'innocent' I’ll call him 'Chumley' - Chumley the Chihuahua”. Chumley’s was one of these profiles that is set up by a pet owner so that they can go around pretending that they are their pet. So it was that a lady pretending to be little Chumley wrote to me to inquire if I could be commissioned to paint his portrait. Of course I like dogs, and I even like people who pretend to be dogs, however I am reticent to do commissions these days, and even more reticent to do a commissioned portrait of a chihuahua. Not wishing to disappoint, nor wishing to turn down paying work, I wracked my brain for a compromise. It was not easy – I mulled this over for days: How could I stoop to doing a portrait of a chihuahua and still retain my dignity as an artist? Eventually I seized upon a solution - I would put Chumley in his proper place. I wrote back to him and explained as politely as I could that I could only include him as a detail, as a minor character added as a sort of 'cameo' within the painting. Chumley might (for example) sit on the lap of a lingerie clad gorgon or lift his leg on the severed head of John the Baptist or add some other weird and witty touch in any number of ways to a larger composition with loftier themes. I asked Chumley to understand that I only portray in my paintings those things that are part of the stream of symbols that course through my imagination. I further explained that, with all due respect to the chihuahua breed, a breed that I find agreeable despite it’s diminutive size (generally speaking I only like large dogs), the chihuahua is simply not a part of the bestiary of my imagination, and so I would be very grateful if he would understand this and settle amicably for the sort of cameo appearance in one of my paintings that I was offering. He never replied. I can only guess that Chumley was too insulted by my belittling offer too dignify it with a response. By the Fall of last year I had mostly forgotten about this seemingly minor encounter. I was busy working simultaneously on the painting above as well as Traffic Jam. In the course of making a painting I try to avoid thinking about what the meaning of the images might be. That sounds peculiar to those who do not create things from their imaginations, but those who do will sympathize since they know that assigning meaning to things prematurely simply stifles the natural efflorescence of the imagination. Yet sometimes as a work progresses a meaning, a resemblance, a reference, or a metaphor becomes very clear and the artist cannot deny it. Such was the case with No Parking Zone. At a certain point it was undeniable that I had painted a portrait of myself as an androgynous human chihuahua of gargantuan scale. A horrifying realization. Moreover, in this self-portrait, I was asphyxiated. Asphyxiated by what? Am I not here suffocated by my own arrogance, strangled by that self-important spirit that cannot swallow its pride so as to do whatever is asked of it? Had this nasty little Chumley Chihuahua come nipping at the shadows of my mind and cleverly chased them, as he might chase rats from a sewer, into the light and onto my painting? Had he in a perverted way, assumed the place in my painting that he had desired? Uggh! Approached from all directions the matter is psychologically sordid. It is a transgression, a usurpation, it is something that is where it should not be – a violation. Even so, it is but a small infraction . . . like parking in a 'No Parking Zone', and I after all have always been a scofflaw.

Cognitive Libertines plays with themes of knowing and understanding. As long as there is a world to be known, there are those who will never know when there is already too much to be known, and their unbridled perception, their wanton understanding, will debauch their consciousness, and brand them as profligates wandering in the splendor of their own hallucinations - or to be more succinct, 'Cognitive Libertines.' Part of the 'Illuminations' collection displayed in Berlin in 2012 and at the Institute of Crazyology in 2021. Cognitive Libertines is one of 8 glowing lightpanels, originally suspended in a dark room and generating their own light to cast their likenesses over the space around them.

Lord of Misrule is inspired by the lore of the 'Carnival King,' the temporary soverign chosen in mockery from Roman times onward in a patchwork of Pagan and Christian customs that survive today in Carnival and related holidays. Part of the 'Illuminations' collection displayed in Berlin in 2012 and at the Institute of Crazyology in 2021. Lord of Misrule is one of 8 glowing lightpanels, originally suspended in a dark room and generating their own light to cast their likenesses over the space around them.

Initial ideas for The Pool arose from an outing with some friends to see a turtle derby in Los Angeles during the summer of 2005. Perhaps the large rectangular ring set up as the racing rink for the turtles suggested the cubic bath central to the composition. Part of the 'Illuminations' collection displayed in Berlin in 2012 and at the Institute of Crazyology in 2021. The Pool is one of 8 glowing lightpanels, originally suspended in a dark room and generating their own light to cast their likenesses over the space around them.

Handbills for 1993 summer solstice party, La Fete Sauvage. This handbill really reflects the period - punk and rave influences were combining. Things like the Big Bang parties and Club Fuck were really influential for the LA crowd. This was more of a punk show (imo) featuring lots of LA Cacophony people.

These are pen and ink drawings, black and white drawings mostly, from sketchbooks going back all the way to my teenage years. Indeed, perhaps the majority of these drawings were executed between 1987 and 1993 (from the time I was 17 until 23). In those early years it was my habit to carry a sketchbook with me everywhere and whenever I felt uncomfortable, socially or otherwise, I would retreat to the sketchbook. Because I felt uncomfortable most of the time, a great deal of drawing got done.