The Story Behind The Pieces- Hopeful

Hope is a tricky thing when you first get HIV. This piece is a meditation on the hope gained after one has had a few years to settle into an ARV regimen and represents a sort of self-check in after a few years of painting my way thorough this disease.

Disease....in and of itself is such a problematic expression. Dis-ease. A lack of or opposite of ease. That definitely describes how you feel being bombarded by a foreign enemy that turns your own blood cells against you. It isn't always being "sick" or "sickly" but it is about the lack of ease from knowing meds are required to keep you alive and healthy. It is about the panic that sets in if you get low on meds before a refill is a available. In our recent political climate it is about the dis-ease of knowing the subsidies that make your $35,000/Year medication affordable may not be available because of rescission or budget cuts by a homophobic anti-sex administration. It is the dis-ease of medication side effects like a loose stool or constant nausea.

"Hopeful" is about being optimistic despite disease. It is about looking to the stars with your head up and dreams intact. It is a reflection on the triumph of the self over one's diagnosis and turning dis-ease in to simply ease. Ease with reality, with the steps one takes to manage their health and ease with loving yourself in spite of the constant weight of stigma.

Weekly Inspiration: Paul Klee

I know. I haven't quite kept up the weekly pace of things. With life and work taking over so much time I've been a bit negligent. That being said. This week's weekly inspiration comes from by way of the stellar "Saint of Inner Light", by Paul Klee.

Paul Klee's sense of inked crisp lines in abstraction to form figures has crept slowly into the latter half of The Gold Series as I continue to explore manifestations of the spirit motif which had its start in The Wanderer and develop my signature abstract figurative style. I've not yet shared any of these Klee inspired works yet but expect these delicate lines combined to suggest form inter playing with my textured washes and gradients.

I'm drawn to Klee for much the same reason. This piece illustrates Klee's explorations of flattened perspective and use of hue and form to block out suggestions. Thematically, this depiction derived from the Hindu God Narasimha resonates with my 10 years as a Buddhist and love of religious undertones or themes.

Klee is known by many for his axiomatic statement, "I am abstract with memories", a driving point in my own art-philosophic journey as it relates to the exploration of trans formative elements of un or underspoken narratives. I am forced now to dive into his own words by way of his journals where he writes in 1915,

"One deserts the realm of the here and now to transfer one's activity into a realm of the yonder were total affirmation is possible.

Abstraction.

The cool Romanticism of this style without pathos is unheard of.
The more horrible this world (as today, for instance), the more abstract our art,
whereas a happy world brings forth an art of the here and now.

Today is a transition from yesterday. In the great pit of forms lie broken fragments to some of which we still cling. They provide abstraction with its material, A junkyard of unauthentic elements for the creation of impure crystals.
That is how it is today."

This journal entry was something I first read in a 2014 exploration of his notebooks and allowed to percolate for a while before recollection at the easel. It is perhaps the most definitive source of my foray into the palimpsest figurative style I am continually perfecting and augmenting.

As far as The Gold Series narrative is concerned I felt this philosophy best mirrored the experience of the HIV positive individual re-constructing a new sense of self post-diagnosis. The act of re-fashioning reality to accommodate the new reality and weight of stigma.

The Gold Series Teaser

Here's an oldie but a goodie about The Gold Series. Even though our print supplier fell through on this portion of the project: I love the video itself. We're lining up a new print producer to re-launch print availability in 2017.

The Story Behind The Pieces- OM

Let's talk about faith.

It's a complicated concept, for me anyway. I was raised by a Catholic mother, Jewish father and have been a self-avowed Buddhist since 2007. I found that Buddhism and mindfulness practices were a key component of coping with my mother's passing from cancer in 2006. After years of casual study beginning in the early 2000's I decided to take refuge vows and become a "proper" Buddhist. This painting was created in 2014, focusing my energies and memories on the first meditation I undertook following my positive diagnosis. 

That initial meditation was earth shattering. 

Flooded with an onslaught of shame and fear, self imposed stigma tinged with hypocrisy hot tears streamed down my face as I tried my damnedest to focus on the root syllable "om"

(Fun fact: "Mantra" in sanskrit means, "Mind protector" A combination of "mun" (mind) and a form of the verb "trayete" (to protect). Lord knows I needed that.)

Why om?  What is "om"?  In the west we so often think of crunchy folks chanting om and reeking of patchouli and chai. But do we stop to comprehending the meaning behind the symbol and the syllable?

Lets start with the fact that this is first and foremost about sound. "OM" is actually pronounced "A--OM" or "AUM" for many. Why? Because in sanskrit, "O" is actually a diphthong! The three parts making up the sound represent a three-fold division of time. A-the waking state, U- the dream state and M- the state of deep sleep. Furthermore, within the sound it is believed that all sounds possible within linguistics are represented by the sounds made by articulation of "OM". This is why many refer to it as the "seed syllable". 

At our most vulnerable, we often take refuge in our past, in good times gone by and people long gone. My first meditation following diagnosis was about taking myself back to my roots, to myself and to the core of who "I" am. I needed to learn where I went wrong, where I made the mistakes of judgement and character that led to this situation. I needed to re-define love and sex and self and other. To do that requires stripping away to the base, the source, to the roots of ego. 

I cracked that day. Where was my equanimity? Out the window. But I kept the mantra going. After all, as a Buddhist I should be "better" at handling this. I should know that all things are impermanent and our mortal coil to be shed regardless of its condition upon return to the great beyond. I remembered, as I began to prepare the dense back-layers before the visual mantra motif, the way I felt sitting that day meditating on just what the fuck to do now that I'm HIV positive.

I began then to paint the glyphs. Slowly marking each om off and channeling the peculiar mix of fear, self doubt and commitment to understanding. I began to see the gold as the vehicle for my acceptance of the virus. I began to understand the reason that meditation stuck with me.

It was about fortitude. It was about forcing myself to look deeply at the ways I'd skewed my sense of self, my sense of worth and my sense of purpose.

"OM" is about getting to the center of ourselves and finding that which breaks us, breaking it, and moving on stronger than before. It is about the courage to take steps of proactive self care when at rock bottom. 

Weekly Inspiration: Gerhard Richter

I'll admit that my obsession with Gerhard has been a long time in the making. He, perhaps more than any other living artist has influenced my concepts of texture, color and inter-dimensionality through process-oriented abstraction. 

Why does the motion of his compositions move me so?  I chose to illustrate his work with the above featured work to contrast it with "Cellular Divide" from The Gold Series. Both possess a uniquely understated movement and vivacity lent to them by the combination of ephemeral striations (similar to "If Bath House Walls Could Talk"). I feel this Richter inspired piece speaks to his philosophy of blurred and moving constructs illustrating the difficulty of art and artists in truly conveying the depth of an emotion or concept on canvas. His blurred notions of form also influence the "spirit motif" running throughout The Gold Series.

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Cellular Divide- 2015

"Cellular Divide" contrasts the lateral motion of the white striations (signifying time) with the ebullient and seething motion of the almost coagulated mass of golden cells budding in the lower left hand corner. The gold leafed areas representing the transformation of self upon realization of a body at war with its own blood.

Cellular Divide is a meditation on the moments spent being stabbed and jabbed to give upteenth blood samples, the moments when the blood that marks us as "dirty" to some and "charged" to others is put in front of us by our nurses and phlebotomists, reminding us of our "other" ness and the viral divide between the positive and negative that often goes unspoken. 

The reality is that cellular divides are a key component of life with the virus. Our medications strive to prevent this divide while we struggle to prevent a divide within ourselves. When our medications fail or the virus becomes resistant this divide comes to the forefront as it wreaks havoc on our immune systems and ability to function productively. The manifold notions of division and biology; interfacing between the micro (self) and macro (society) while a war rages inside one's blood and bones and mind are the focus of "Cellular Divide"

Also at the forefront of this meditation is the contemplation of medication resistance.

When someone has HIV or AIDS they are put on medication called ARV. (Anti-Retroviral Therapy).

While this medication is effective at combating the virus on a variety of levels it must be taken as prescribed otherwise the HIV virus may in fact mutate to be resistant. If enough resistant HIV cells take hold, a person's regimen becomes ineffective and a new one must be sought. This fear of resistance plays into the psychology of the virus and adds to the worries we with HIV carry with us constantly. I wanted to meditate on this fear while driving home the relatively simplistic biology at the heart of the problem.

I chose to pay homage to Richter for his philosophical focus on the difficulty faced by artists translating experience to canvas for the viewer. The decided blurs and chance effects acting as a mimetic construct bent on verisimilitude through ambiguity seemed appropriate to translating the pervasive fuzziness of HIV related fatigue and mental anguish.

The Story Behind The Pieces- The Wanderer

Okay, so I'll just say it now: this piece is hands down the most popular of The Gold Series.  This is the first of many posts where I'll explore the meanings behind select works from The Gold Series.

"The Wanderer"- 2014

This is a piece about the search for self after diagnosis.

After realizing that, yes, my body is at war with itself because of a virus and that is okay. I am okay...It took a few dark years (two or so) to really come to terms with being ‪#‎HIV‬ Positive.

Now, few things force the newly positive to radically accept their status than dating. In the course of this long term project, I've dated a few men, three actually. Apparently I'm on a yearly cycle with them. In any case, after each relationship ended, a sense of hopelessness would course through my consciousness. I'd wonder, "Who will want me, damaged and diseased?" "Do I really have to start dating again, fully aware of how many times my status has stood in the way of being with someone otherwise into me?"

These are common questions that positive people ask themselves whether they're newly diagnosed and freaking out, or long term survivors wrestling with lingering and cyclical fears and doubts.

The Wanderer is a "spirit motif" piece, and the figure or "light being" as one of my fans calls it, represents the inner light we each carry, that hopes and dreams for a better tomorrow, full of the knowledge that each of, regardless of status, is made of stars.

In the context of The Gold Series, The Wanderer is a symbol of resilience, fortitude and unwavering search for a better version of one-self through adversity. The recurring spirit motif sees this wanderer-being as bearer of many emotions and burdens. In other pieces he is contemplating the chaos before him in the form of the unknown, in others simply standing witness to a fractured sense of self. This piece, the first "spirit motif" piece, is very dear to me. The glyphs at the bottom are actually the words, "And no matter where he went, he remembered…"I am made of stars." done in my signature loosely stacked cursive style.

Priced at $4,600 for the original. The Wanderer is also available as a print for pre-order until March 30. Prints begin shipping March 15.

 

Weekly Inspiration: Jean-Michel Basquiat

It is a saucy day here in New Milford at the studio. I just sat down to my desk and realized its time for another weekly inspiration! This week I want to talk about one of the most integral figures of the neo-expressionist movement. Some have gone so far as to call my work neo-neo expressionist, which I guess it could be in the same way that Yale's architecture is neo-neo gothic (discuss). Either way, there are some clear parallels to certain aspects of our work that I think hold some merit in light of the philosophy behind The Gold Series.

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"50 Cent Piece"

I chose this piece to illustrate the influence of Jean Michel on The Gold Series because it highlights his use of palimpsest textual elements to evoke the frenzied chaos of contemporary existence.

Although Cy Twombly too, made use of palimpsest text, I took from his his more frenzied less textual strokes and also borrowed his undulating color forms on white space, or his repetitive stroke patterns in the pieces focused on visual mantras.

Conversely, Basiquait inspired elements from The Gold Series were woven into many backgrounds and graffiti like structures as in the large scale 6 x 8 foot canvas entitled "If Bath House Walls Could Talk"  This powerful, large scale piece is a reflection on the 80's culture of which both Basquiat, The Downtown 500 and burgeoning gay community borne out of the initial wave of the AIDS crisis lived with. Dripping with paint suggestive of the…fluids that one may encounter…as well as the multicolored striations representing the classic "hanky code" colors, the piece uses gold as a representation of the unique place bath house culture played in the development of both the AIDS epidemic and gay social consciousness. The shadowy gateway figure (not visible in this shot below as it was still in progress)connoting the mysterious pleasures and hidden (potential) dangers in a bath house.)

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Yours truly sitting in front of  "If Bath House Walls Could Talk" 2015  Notice the graffiti like forms peeking out from behind striated layers.

The piece raises questions as to how we as a gay culture claim to find a form of liberation through sex, but then slut shame and cast shade and stigma at those who are HIV positive. It asks us to compare the initial, communal, response to HIV that gave rise to the very LGBTQ movement that led us to marriage equality to the cavalier disregard of the violent and radical realities faced by trans women of color (49 % more likely than cisgender folks to contract HIV). Where is the community? Where is the solidarity?

Why is it that in the dark, low-lit rooms, fueled often by a mix of poppers and drugs, that many gay men shed inhibitions they'd never admit to in the light; while spewing vitriol the next day at brunch for the "dirty" and the "slutty".  If bath house walls could talk, they'd tell us as a community to get a grip. They'd tell us to be honest with ourselves and our history. They'd ask us to find new and more healthy ways to connect as people first and not merely tools to get off. They'd tell us that yes, "the glory days" were fun; but they're not a model for a modern liberation movement. They'd ask us to learn from our past, not doom ourselves to repeat it.

The piece places the colored striations and golden drips above a background of these frenzied strokes, these chaotic strokes formed from stacked cursive letters are the secrets of the bath house, the 2,3,4 AM bloodshot eyes rolling back in heads to the thump thump thump of a stranger unknown through a hole in some MDF; The colors our euphemistic codes for the raunch and the rollicking. Or the memorialized fallen from an epidemic of excess. 

I'll close with a few questions:

“Hookups, fleeting intimacy, play, fun whatever you want to call casual sex is irrelevant. It’s a wonderful thing and I firmly believe in sexual autonomy free from stigma on all levels. But I must ask myself as a community health advocate the following , “How can we make fun, safe and informed? How can we meet people where they’re at in ways that speak to their personal truths absent stigma and fear based messaging? How can we reconcile the past with a responsible, informed future without romanticizing risk? If bath house walls could talk, what would we say back to them?”

— Jonathan-Joseph Ganjian

Weekly Inspiration: Andy Warhol

I love Andy Warhol.  There--I said it.

He's pretty divisive really, some people just don't "get" Andy.

I like to think I do. I like to think of him as an art-business pioneer.

I like to think that Andy's philosophy that married art and commerce is something I've melded into my philanthropic roots for a unique blend of art, business and positive change.

Here I think, is a great opportunity to showcase one of my favorite quotes from the man himself that really spoke to me from a young age. I first stumbled across it in High School during some research for an AP Art project and it stuck with me:

 

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“...I had by that time decided that “business” was the best art. 
Business art is the step that comes after Art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist. After I did the thing called “art” or whatever its called, I went into business art. I wanted to be an Art Businessman or a Business Artist. Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. During the hippie era people put down the idea of business—they’d say, “Money is bad” and “Working is bad,” but making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.””

— Andy Warhol

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Let me deconstruct this a bit for you, so you can understand why this left a huge impression on me as a young creative and why it served as a major jumping off point for The Gold Series.

I believe in the power of business to do good in the world IF leaders are driven not simply by profit, but impact. I believe that artists can be true to their principles without "selling out" and I believe that commercially successful art has great potential to become a springboard for new ideas and understandings.

The Gold Series was an ambitious debut collection, having previously only sold work here and there. But I knew that my mission to generate dialogue through art by putting it into people's hands as originals, prints and a collaborative book, would be not only good business but the best way to accomplish this dialogue-driven dream. I believe this multi-pronged approach is intrinsically tied to the idea of business, commodity and presenting information for consumption in ways our consumer driven consciousness can comprehend. A coffee table book then, featuring the work alongside context, seemed a marriage of commercial vehicle with creative purpose along the lines of my darling Andy. 

 

Weekly Inspiration: Cy Twombly

It's the weekend! Hooray! I know for me, the weekend is the perfect time to learn about something new. In that spirit, I've decided that every Saturday I'll share a different perspective on my work through the lens of the artists whose work inspires me.

I'm going to start with one of the most influential painters to my creative ethos, Cy Twombly. 

Featured below is one of his later works "untitled iii (Bacchus)" Notice the undulating and fervent stroke patterns evoking the frenzied passion of the title diety, Roman god of wine and celebration Bacchus. Links to myth and allusions to figures therein run throughout the corpus of Twombly's career. For me as an artist who uses my craft to express the unspoken in similarly abstract ways; I am drawn to both the visceral nature of the strokes and their underlying intensity, but more philosophically I am moved by the links he draws between abstraction and meaning through allusion and title. I am moved by the experience he calls the viewer in the gallery or museum to have in assessing the work first upon sight, then when moving closer to engross themselves in the detail, and then when they come upon the title. This multiple-stage process of understanding, to me, runs throughout The Gold Series in much the same way as Twombly: through both titling of pieces and the palimpsest integration of text on canvas. 

Cy Twombly |  untitled iii (Bacchus) 2005

"Mortal Coil" 2015 

Compare Twombly's use of repetitive stroke with Gold Series piece "Mortal Coil".

This piece is one to the most surprisingly complex of the series despite its diminutive size. Thick layers of linseed oil and pigments swirl under a golden coil. This coil marks a meditation on the personal choices made between 2004 and 2015, when the piece was made. It is important to note that under this piece was the start of a painting from 2004; for which I felt an artistic reclamation was necessary given the nature of The Gold Series.  

The philosophical underpinnings of this piece stem both from the popular notion of "Mortal Coil" present in Shakespeare's Hamlet (scene 3 act i) therefore invoking themes of death and depression; not only of Shakespeare but the ancient Greeks. The mortal coil can take on the role suggested by Schopenhauer's reading of the history behind the play where he proposes that a typesetters error in the line "When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.." should in fact be "shuttled". This, he believes, cements a connection between "mortal coil" and the life-thread of ancient Greek mythology. Aside from these direct references; "coil" itself has a rich etymological history with a variety of meanings including culling, threshing, fuss, or a stirring.

All of these converge upon my experience as an HIV positive artist both in the obvious contemplations of death that arise with diagnosis of such a condition; but also in the act of refection on life itself.

Conditions like HIV that are accompanied by shame, stigma and fear compounded by the inescapably visceral feelings related to a disease acquired through intimacy leave open wounds that cause many to dwell on or question the relationships and choices that led to living with a body at war with itself. The complex layers below the golden thread of life representing the ebb and flow of people and choices are the perfect background for contemplation in stark, unspeakable reality. 

Why all the fuss? A #TBT to why I started the #Goldseries

I mean, HIV is totally not a problem anymore right? At least, if you're not in Africa…WRONG! HIV is not over, but the era of scare tactics and fear mongering should be. I guess that's where my  whole inspiration started. I wanted to use my artistic voice to draw attention to the complexity of HIV/AIDS today. I wanted to share the benefits I gained from meditation and mindfulness with others living with not only HIV but other chronic conditions; I wanted to share my perspectives so that other positive young men and women searching, might see they're not alone and might see that there is a community of us fighting for visibility, respect, rights, funding for research and the promise of an AIDS Free Generation. 

I posted the other day about endings, about how the falling leaves and crisp air had me realizing that this whole three year process is coming to a close. Now I think its time to take a look at the other side of the coin; the beginning of this whole project. 

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I started The Gold Series because I wanted to find a way to translate my experience with HIV into paintings that speak to the thousands of maybes, what-if’s, could’ve beens and how did I’s which are part and parcel of this disease and all its facets. The Gold Series is about making the unspoken and unspeakable visual. It is about the combination of my creative style and spiritual path. It is about the triumph of self over limitations of the body. I began painting in my youth as a way to counteract the motor skill issues that come with my cerebral palsy; it is no surprise then, that to overcome this new challenge in adulthood I should turn back to art as the conduit for reflection, understanding and most importantly, spreading awareness of the many HIV related issues facing us as a national and global community.

The palimpsest, complex layers and color combinations infuse the process-centered notions of abstract expressionism with written and quasi-linguistic forms to call into question the hidden personal and social narratives the piece seeks to highlight; often juxtaposed with titles that further contextualize them within the mission of The Gold Series

As evidenced by the robust work of organizations like Visual AIDS, I am not original in this. I am not the first to take brush to canvas in the hopes of translating these perspectives. However I believe the holistic nature of The Gold Series project, spanning 50 original paintings (5 available as prints) and a monograph featuring my relevant poetry, prose and interviews with other HIV positive individuals, activists and change-makers is a uniquely comprehensive window into life with HIV/AIDS today and the issues we face a we fight for an AIDS free generation

Endings

Hello loves; how are you?

Things at the studio are going swimmingly as I come up on the final phases of The Gold Series, my first major collection, check out "The Wanderer" in the amazing frame by our friends at Northlight Framing down the road from me in New Milford.

It's a rainy day here, but with fall settling in and the river outside running low; its not strange that I'd be thinking of closure and endings. 

Three years ago, really three and a quarter…I realized that my unique creative talents combined with compelling personal narrative should launch me into something outside myself. 

How could I turn such a negative, an HIV diagnosis, into a positive the way I had with my Cerebral Palsy and painting to overcome my motor skill handicaps? As I complete the final pieces, let's reflect:

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Imagine you've just taken a seat at the studio…let's chat!

The answer to these questions was, of course, to combine them. To use the power of art to speak to the many issues of and surrounding HIV/AIDS both in the US and internationally.

I set out to paint 50 pieces. I set out to showcase the way I'd used Buddhist concepts and teachings to overcome challenges to acceptance of my own mortality. I set out to create a body of work that used a palimpsest abstraction to convey the silent pains and unspoken complex narratives of those with HIV/AIDS and chronic conditions.  As I worked hand in hand at the grassroots level tackling these issues I realized my project was more serious than I'd intended. It was a chance to highlight vital issues such as:

• depression and mental health issues amongst the HIV positive
• PrEP, Syringe exchange programs
• serodiscordant (mixed status) relationship
• drug use in the gay community
• minority access to HIV/AIDS prevention and education services
• the trans community's unique burden in the fight against HIV/AIDS amongst those who are engaged in sex work and
• ever present reductions in state and federal funding for direct services and research through agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and offices of the Ryan White Care Act and even philanthropic bodies such as United Way.

among many others. This is why select pieces of The Gold Series have been accompanied by thematic essays and select poems, highlighting the issues at the core of The Gold Series. Together, across medium and style, The Gold Series originals, studies, prints and final book serve as one artists comprehensive view of HIV/AIDS as a painter, fundraiser and activist living with the virus. 

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Stylistic motifs throughout the collection are rooted in process-focused deconstructions of my thoughts or mantras as conveyed through "automatic" or repetitive movements imbued with meditative absorption and mindful application. Many of those feature my signature "glyph" constructs, some of which are repetitive syllables or words (as in the piece "OM" 2014), others mere nothingness absent the meditative background to their flowing movements. ("The normal heART" 2014) This too is deliberate, and intends to draw into question the very underpinnings of meaning, context and mimetic purpose. Such semiotic arguments are raised in light of The Gold Series mission to explore the deep complexity of living with HIV. 

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the normal heART"

To that end, these confusing, shifting knots of "meaning" contain the questions of struggling with fundamental meaning, period.  Of struggling with what defines love, lust, living, dying, surviving, medicating or failing. They are like the trails of the whirling dervish, circling to find meaning in the chaos, in the turning, yearning of humanity towards God in the search for meaning.

Other motifs of course run throughout, but for now, I wanted to touch on my glyphs, because I happens to love them.

Thanks for checking in with the studio, until next time, stay saucy!