“Uncover Discover”, EXTRA SERIES, No. XX

Post explosion point of No. 17, “Cloudbusting in the Air” came this piece. This hones in on two parts

1. The furthering of the consciousness series by creating a 12 part segmented divide of real time events bordered by a fluorescent fault line within the face.

2. The idea of by going to forward, we redecorate the past. In this case, I’m taking the classic ray burst background that has defined me for so many years and redecorating it with the current ‘stream of consciousness’ pen work.

Rewind 7 to 8 years ago

The development of the ray in my paintings supposedly came about late one night in 2004/2005, in a basement that served as an artist studio in South of Market, San Francisco. It was 3am, and I was in mid artist blackout painting furiously for a street show that never ended up materializing. I looked at all the other paintings that were sloshed together. Most of them looked the same… a two tone face with a one tone background. I was keeping it simple because I didn’t really have a system of keeping track of the colors I used. ..

When I looked at the collection, I grew bored of myself. There was nothing to distinguish myself from any other artist out there. It just was a portrait of a ‘woman’, with colors I wasn’t sure of, behind a solid background… and in entirety, the whole collection was just a bunch of ‘women’ with solid colors in the back.. The theme was muted, and bland, and therefore it just seemed like a ‘study’, rather than anything that had to do with a statement or heart.

I sat there with Bjork, and found a ruler… and made rays around her head. I think 16 in total. This brought of a very familiar process and imagery of my past even before.

Rewind 7 years more, and I’m in Atlanta, Georgia. Freshly sore from my reality check of being a studio painter at SCAD, I moved to Atlanta to pursue a career in Fashion Design… with a focus in marketing, history of costume, and fashion sketching. My model sketches all bore ONE similarity, and that was this circular halo over their head, with ruler sunbursts exploding from the center. Every collection that I drew had this one thing in common.

Fast forward 15 years to the present, and this massive light bulb shoots over my head like the 4th of July with a nostalgic boomerang in its hand, and I realize that these rays weren’t experimental as they were subconscious patterns brought up by my Catholic upbringing.

Oh yes. The rays weren’t accidents whatsoever happening in that basement at 3am in San Francisco, nor at the drafting table in the classroom on a downtown Atlanta school evening in the late nineties. The first time I ever remember using these rays was when i was a child attending Saint Augustine’s Catholic school in the South learning to draw the saints at such a young age. And in fact, all of my early drawings and beginning sketches were learned from drawing St. Jude, St. Catherine, and Saint Theresa as a small child.

And it explains when ever I’m at LACMA or at the Louvre that I’m STUCK in the religious section transfixed because this where I learned form and figure to begin with!

It seemed like my whole career as a painter was tunnel visioned into this exploding horizon of where I came from.. This piece suddenly, already drafted in rays, became a blank canvas of my present and future drawings. Mind you this piece has no religious subliminal advertising. This is more so a realization piece on where I got my form from and the massive attachment to rays throughout my work. It is my primary background template that first housed my pigment codes in a pattern that communicated color to you. It was the FIRST template where I wrote PO20 (CP Cad Or) on one ray, and wrote Pb29+Pw6 (LUTL) on another ray, to paint the contrasting yet complimentary color scheme to you. It was not only the origin of my form, but it was the origin that helped me house my geometric code.

In this piece, the panels go over:

• Directions of uncovering and discovering
• Rarities
• Family ties
• Everything but the kitchen sink
• Shapes and secrets
• Eyes and music
• Sun and Moon and more.

PS: Most of this was done in a Laundromat off of Hillhurst and at the La Brea Tar Pits off of Wilshire Blvd.