Tetra gramon I grew up in a little town called chadam New Jersey about a half hour outside of the city and um my dad owned a record store down in Redbank down the shore by you know sort of Springsteen country you know and um one of the guys that worked there was a guy in a band called Monster Magnet
remember them I love Monster Magnet yeah so monster maget Dave and then there was a guy named God I can't even remember his name anymore it's sad I can't remember it was so long ago he worked at my dad's store wow and the other guy worked at the comic book shop in Red Bank cuz they weren't you know you look
at it's so funny when you're young and you see like a like someone in a band mentally you're like that person must have everything in the world you think they live in a mansion and they've got piles of girls around them and and everything is going PG ke and like these two guys who I like looked up to and
their music and all that stuff were like one worked at my dad's record store and the other guy worked at the comic book shop selling me Dark Knight comic books and stuff you know and and uh that was actually great to see you know to know that it like changed your perception of what success was because it isn't those
things the mansions and the cars and the this and the that it's it's just the fact that they got to to make music and they did whatever they could to make music and um it's very hard to Define exactly what what what success really truly truly is I mean I I was born with no options like I can my earliest memories of growing up were
about creating and being struck by images ref like reference material I started hoarding reference material in kindergarten like I I I remember there was like a time where I learned to tie my shoes and my teacher gave me this sticker of a of a dragon and it was like the body and the head and the arms and
the tail were all separate and you could kind of do it and I was so proud of the sticker and I not not because I had tied my shoes I just like I just loved the way it looked and I couldn't explain why but I lost one of the arms in class during the day and I was so upset that I didn't have that arm anymore for this
thing I couldn't find it and she wouldn't give me another one and I've kind of just been like not to sound cheesy but just kind of been like looking for that arm my entire life you know first grade battl Star Galactica and the Muppets were like a really big thing and I you know I the day the
morning after battl Star Galactica would come on me and my friend would sit and have like a b a drawing battle to like replicate what we saw the day before and I had was everyone in your school into the same stuff or would you say you had particular interests I was such an outcast like even from the from the from
the very start like there was no moment of going to school for me that was pleasant except for things like that yeah and you know there's there was like a I remember I had this great third grade teacher that read us James and the Giant Peach that book and she would bring us Snicker doodle cookies that she
made us and read it to the class and just I just remember sitting there and and visualizing that story in my brain as she was reading it to us and she was in my you know you have this skewed memory but I I thought she was probably like the most beautiful woman in the world and she was telling me this
story and she was feeding me cookies and it was just like those little things really stuck with me what was your home life like at that time it was it was you know my parents are great people my mom's an interior designer and still is um and my father when I was growing up worked in the printing business um until I was about you know 12 he
worked in Manhattan and you know I had a great childhood it was I lived in an idic town with you know suburbs super suburbs yeah like as suburban as it could possibly be all the houses look the same as each other when you walk in certain parts we lived in a really cool house because my mother was into to
designing homes it was like uh this beautiful home made out of field stones that were pulled from the paic river that ran through our town so it was actually a really beautiful house they still live there it was great my house was great I had two friends that were super solid and everybody else thought I was insane
yeah and I just I didn't know why I couldn't understand it but I I didn't try to make people like me I just did my thing and you know was in my head a lot and drawing a lot and just staying in my lane and I was always kind of finding things like almost too early I don't know I was had a way of like finding
music and things years and years before they meant anything to the world so I found a lot of you know peace in those places and you have brothers or sisters I have a little brother but he's like seven years older than me or seven years younger than me so like you know the first stretch of life was just me and my best
friend Don who uh who our parents met in Lama's class so we were basically like twin brothers you know um spent all of our time to who just came to visit me last weekend you know cool it was Ronald Reagan for Jimmy Carter and then Ronald Reagan I really remember Ronald Reagan being elected
president and sitting with my father in the living room at uh on Election night drawing campaign posters for Reagan and like hanging them on the walls in the living room because I wanted my Dad loved Reagan and I wanted to you know I you want to you have a close I I was close to my dad and I wanted to impress him so I was
drawing WR I still actually have some of those drawings um all my memories are about like music and drawing and hoarding pictures um magic cataloges and I held them like you know little secret Bibles and I wouldn't show this stuff to anybody it was like I was always kind of hiding stuff I would make like boxes and
draw skulls and crossbones on them like keep out stuff and hide the stuff inside those boxes I did it with my candy I would like take old coffee cans and draw tape paper around them make them look really nice and draw skull and crossbones on them and hide candy and you know where things were oh yeah I
knew exactly where everything was but it was I keep I still do I keep if you ask me to like find a Matchbox car that I still have I could go find it for you within 30 seconds you know I'm I'm very organized in in here from especially for visual things you know and tell me let's talk more about hoarding was it
always to be able to get back to it to reference it or was it about something else yeah I mean I I think I probably just found a lot of solace in this stuff because it was my mine you know and when you say mine do you mean physically mine or this is an example of my taste it was my taste and I felt like I was the only
person in the world that had it yeah and it was always skulls were the most important when I would go through these cataloges and and find a skull it was like like oh my God and I would just study it and study it and draw it and draw it draw it and draw it and draw it again and like I said still luckily my
mom kept most most of my stuff so I have a lot of it what's the first time you saw a physical skull my best friend Don's dad had one I don't and it was in their kitchen and uh they had all these cats and ferrets and it was like a really great house to hang out in um live or stuffed uh live okay but and like uh
there was just so many cats in their house and eventually like a goat and all kinds of like cool we had uh his mom had a skunk like it was really strange and it was the 70s like people just kind of did stuff I remember showing up in school in like fifth grade I had a British flag T-shirt with no sleeves that I bought in the city and I
showed up at school and like that was one of the worst days of my entire life like the reaction yeah at school and then sure as [ __ ] like you know six months later every kid had a t-shirt like I was I like had checkerboard Vans people would come and pour stuff on them on purpose and pick them steal them
and throw them in the trees you know just stuff like that that was what it was like at school but I didn't really care I wasn't like sitting there C I I don't know I really appreciate that that happened to me at this point in my life probably really it was probably really hard at the time but it definitely made me be me
yeah you know and um it's not like a poor me I'm not saying these things to because I feel bad for myself yeah there's it's not probably wasn't the only kid it was happening to it feels that way when it's happening to you but I got into rund DMC I went to see the ice capades with my dad at
MSG and then Tower you know used to I believe it stayed open till midnight and so my dad is a massive massive music fan Jazz primarily and like um you know jazz singers uh Cabaret singers stuff like this country and so we went there and you obviously and Broadway yeah went down there Jazz section upstairs yes he went
up there Tower had those incredible displays that they made you know it wasn't like the record comp because they were the only store that had those things and they were amazing and I walked in and I saw the first Run DMC album so this was Pro that was probably like 84 I think is when it came out
and I was always allowed to pick a record and I bought bought that and uh a tape cuz I was really into my Walkman so I wanted the tape and um then you did maybe couple years later you did a record with them and that was when I first heard of you and saw a picture of you and I was like who the hell is that guy you kind of kept
putting all this stuff out Dice and PE and just these things that no one I was around was listening to at all nobody knew who any of these people were and I would like break dance in my backyard on this giant piece of cardboard by myself like listening to these you know especially Run DMC and LL Co J we like
the thing and then I in 87 Christmas break this kid gave me the first Boogie Down album and that was like a whole whole other Stratosphere of oh my God I wanted to make this feel it revealed itself to me that it should be kind of like a movie this series of work we start with these like three pictures here which are very
loose and gestal and fuzzy is and I kind of treated these as though they were almost like titles playing in in the beginning of a movie right where it's like kind of setting a scene and these three paintings were done on white backgrounds where the 93 other paintings were paintings that started on a black background and
you draw you pull the pictures out of it when you work on white you apply it on top of it so that's the difference that happens in these first three so I kind of wanted to like set this scene of this environment of this place where people are eating and music is being played and people seem they seem to be
having a good time we got this is called The Master of Ceremonies this painting and he's he's setting the scene obviously we've been talking about music a lot it's a big big big part of my life I grew up in these in rooms like this like going to the alanin room in New York and and and all the jazz clubs
downtown and whatever like those were they're familiar to me these interior scenes and these well-dressed people and I'm calling them people I know they have skeleton faces but they're they're they're people would you know what this room looks like that they're in like could you imagine the
space they're in yeah yeah I I actually want like kind of want to make it physically make it I might make one in here like a little one mhm um like a Sound Stage almost what else were we listening to besides hip-hop at that time super in a Bad Brains Misfits um Black Flag jfa the cramps um Minor Threat you know I was
listening to what I was seeing in Thrasher MH The Misfits were from Jersey obviously skulls and the music was so next level and also with that you know the the movie element of it was really interesting to me the influence of the movie mov on the song titles and the what the songs were about and I was
obsessed with the missfits I'm still obsessed with the Misfits you ever get to see them live no I never went I never went um good show I'm sure it's like I can't put into words how important the Misfits are to me and like what they did to my brain was like I'm still dealing with it you know and I loved Elvis my dad still had
probably still does have like 45s from uh when he was a kid and I would sit with him and listen I'd be like Dad can we go upstairs and get the Elvis seven inches out of that closet he'd be like all right and i' dance you know and uh so Danzig was like kind of just I was so happy a few years ago when
Danzig finally like just threw it down and was like diden Elvis covers album and it's fantastic I love it I listen to it all the time um he was able to marry so many things all of which were things you were into all of them yeah everyone I listened to it on albums and that I still have and and like it sounds one way and I listen to
it on Spotify and it sounds another I love Spotify I think it's just fantastic to just have that so convenient all the time like I'm not a yeah I want it to be I want things to be convenient Spotify really like the day I heard about that I was like yep I'll do that and you're able to just
transfer back to all these things and I could be driving in someplace I don't have my records but I really want to hear myor threat right now and I can that's fantastic because I still kind of just I listen to some new music but I still really just mostly listen to that stuff like I really loved early You2 as well
like at that time like October and and and uh boy those records were really important to me um having a record store like my dad like bought this used record store in Red Bank and then it was just like you know that was my weekend job was to get up go down to the store with him and work and I spent all my time with him in
Manhattan on the weekends going through J&R and all these little record stores and um you know around bleers bleer Bobs and all these places and and uh but then to be able to just be like walk into a record this is my record store you know I you know it's my dad but it's mine too I guess you know and he sold
bootlegs where we would you know some he had these cases of like Dead shows and Zeppelin shows and Black Sabbath shows and and I my one of my jobs would be like someone would come in and be like I want this concert and I would have to sit there and dub it for them and then they'd come back a couple hours later
and and get the tape and I'd have to like photocopy it and cut it put it into the tape for them and stuff like that and then he sold posters which was another massive way of gaining all this insight into visual information about like live tour posters and stuff Mor a lot of morsy posters and cramps
posters and bands that were doing stuff like still at that time and we would he would buy these posters from these suppliers in Europe that would send them like post delivery day was always really exciting to like see what was coming and and uh yeah I would just sit there just and then bootleg like albums too you
remember like the old like there was like a lot of Zappa bootlegs that I really liked and um Zappa was another one I got into really really early and uh cuz he kind of had like a minor maybe it wasn't a hit but I heard it on the r radio that like don't eat the yellow snow song and then my best
friend Don's dad bought us the tape of uh that's Joe's Garage I believe right that that that's on oh no I think so and um so we'd listen to that in the car driving around Zappa what was the culture of the record store like would the same people be the people who would come to buy records it was cool it was
like there was a little Community down there like I that was where I had some friends too there was like some skaters cuz it was the beach so like I knew some kids and kissed a girl and stuff like that you know like which I would never get the opportunity to in my town and um yeah it was a lot of regulars some guys that would come in
and just stand there all day and tell you the same stories and and but like Bon Joy came in one day you know that was like I that was really cool you know Bruce Springstein would come into my dad's record store that was really cool seeing the guys from Monster Magnet have jobs seeing Bruce Springsteen in my dad's store it just
humanized Heroes really early for me which was really great you know and like I look at my life now and I'm sitting here with you like the people who I have relationships with in my life are like people who are operating at like the highest levels of whatever it is that they do and some of them might be wildly
[ __ ] famous or they make they write movies and nobody knows who the hell they are but they're like the best at it and like I feel really lucky that I saw this I don't have this like fear of or idolize like famous people and [ __ ] I just I I don't know what's the right way to put this do you understand
what I'm trying to say absolutely just they're just people and they are and that was your experience from childhood and you got to see it early which takes away this I think it could be a limiting uh belief if you feel like the only people who have success in the Arts are special people and they're not like us
that's not true it's not even remotely true it's not remotely true I mean you have to probably as a producer I would imagine a lot of what you see it or have to do is witness the psychological traumas of the people that are creating music because it is psychologically traumatic to create
and that's the best part of it I think is is having those fears those doubts you don't want that to go away but you want to fight through it you want to get through it and you want to now like at this point in my life I come into the studio with no agenda and no plan and I don't want one at all zero plan I have
this series I've been working on it's over the last little over the last a year and a couple months and I have one more painting to do which I'll start later today and I have no idea and then it'll be and then the series is done yeah and I have I have no idea what that painting is yet and I don't care like it
will absolutely tell me what it needs to be at like 5:00 tonight and I'll sit down in my studio at my house it'll just happen so these are some of this one is one of the earliest ones I painted this one really right at the beginning and then these others kind of followed this one I actually just made like two weeks
ago and interesting his teeth look like they're letters of some sort yeah it's it's it's all like the teeth I've drawn and painted so many skulls that I don't even try to make teeth anymore I just want to make the suggestion of something the first time I really made that happen in a meaningful way to myself that I can
recall is this this just four lines yeah and the red and I don't know why they have this R but they had to they just had toh when you started how much of the story did you have none of it so you show up the first day is this the very first painting no the first one is over there we'll get to we'll get there okay very show up the
first day tell me what happened first day I have this image I take a photocopy of it and I like do a rough sketch kind of tracing out the the figures on a piece paper no onto a canvas I can like transfer size yeah like directly onto the canvas this canvas is this big oh I see it's really small and I just got these figures on
there and I hung it on the wall and I sat down and within like I don't think it took me more than 3 hours it was like there painting was done minus like oh this little thing needs this and this I like and then I and I kind of got back from it and I was like it's like I I I don't know what I
just did here but I really really like it I not I'm not a Sketchbook guy I'm not like a a sit around and draw for no reason like if I make a drawing it's like going to be a final piece of artwork it's not like um DN not I don't do sketches I need my reference materials I need my music and my coffee and my
environment to be right and then I just do it 80% of the paintings that I've made are done in my brain 100% finished paintings and all I have to do is sit down and apply them to the canvases that's basically where I've gotten with it so you see the picture before you begin absolutely I can see it
Crystal I don't have any doubt of what it's going to become see we started these were really just like there's going to be some flowers there's going to be some flowers and then you know as it progresses the flowers become tighter the everything kind of get to these first four little scenes of this
and you know very nice sort of that but more rendered and then there's this this outside shot of this castle where this is taking place all of this is taking place in here and there's this minion of the devil lighting this P to show him where to go right so the painting we're seeing is the painted rendition of something that you
see not as a painting you see as a scene yeah first almost like a photograph first yeah or I could see a specific and actual photo that someone took or that I find or whatever like that's what I start with Source yeah I work from Source material have you done many paintings with paintings in them no this
is the first time in this in this body of work is really as far as I can recall the first time I've ever done it and I absolutely loved doing it it's been effort is to spend time in front of these paintings yeah that's that's the best way to describe it and like the amount of work that can happen in what seems like a really short
period of time um obviously that comes with years and years of experience and confidence and having a vision and a clear clear understanding of the materials and also having the willingness to know how little you actually know every time you get up to one of these things tell me the process where does it
start does it start with you have an idea and then you draw something or does it start standing in front of a canvas it's never the same I I guess you know this particular thing I'm working on is I decided to take like The White Album and the wall and every other double [ __ ] album of all time and try to
make them all you know I've made 96 paintings in a year that's that's not normal right it's not what I've done in the past I've never made a series this big I've never made a series of paintings that has like a like a story through it all there's a there's definitely a narrative to it this was spawned by seeing a Lobby card
from an old seral um which one it's called the moon Riders and the films do not exist all that's left is the lobby card the lobby cards and like a couple of posters and like I found you know I I Rabbit Hole trying to find as much of this stuff as I possibly could there isn't any there's
just like nothing I have like 10 images that sort of spawned all of this um probably like six I found on a tumbler once and then I dug around finding old poster collectors and calling them and I found a guy that had some and I bought them so I made a painting one little painting a 9 by 12 inch painting and uh I showed it to somebody
who I had a sort of a working relationship with I was like I'm thinking about making like a series of these and he was like don't do that no it's a terrible idea don't do that and I was like that's what I'm definitely going to do you know one of my greatest ways of getting through life is considering the
source right of what this inform who it's coming from and you kind of go well actually like there's nothing aspirational about I don't look up to you for anything yeah really you know um so I don't trust your opinion and I'm going to trust my gut CU that's all I've got you know that really really
well so I just kind of started making some and then I showed them to uh I was texting one night with Damien Hurst and just about whatever catching up and towards the end of it I sent him that painting that the first one and he was like whoa what's that then I sent him another one and he really responded
very positively to what I was doing he's somebody who I greatly respect and trust and has been remarkably generous to me in my life and helped me in ways that I can't understand when did you first meet him 2013 he was introduced to my stuff and and wanted to get some I had this book that had come out and my friend gave him the
book via our mutual friend he was like I'd love to get that paint I was like there's none of those paintings are available they're all gone they're just in a book but I'm making these new ones for this Museum exhibition I was having and uh we worked something out and he ended up like purchasing these paintings for
me that was really you know motivational what are the ways that you feel like Damien changed the game [Applause] I can only speak to how he changed the game for me okay he taught me how to Value myself um and he taught me a lot about methods of creating that I hadn't considered in the past he changed the game by doing
those things I don't know that I should actually speak to them because they're I don't know if it's it doesn't it's he's just pushed things in a way that no one else can do it I can't do it it's impossible for me to do it I cannot do it he took methods of working that you know Warhol did but like having this
sort of factory thing and took it to such a different level of Polish and shine and Glitz and Glam and [ __ ] use that no one's ever done you know and I love his work love it I'm I all of it because I understand why it's there it's important it's like a an album that everybody hates by a band and
you you know they had no choice but to make that he's somebody that doesn't have a choice he's got to do it you can't explain it I don't want to explain his paintings I don't want to explain my painting I don't know what they're I don't want to tell you what my paintings are about my dad came here on Sunday
with me to see this stuff and walked around and looked at it and he was he asked me like what it was about and I know he like wanted an answer like it wasn't a I wasn't able to be like I don't I don't want to tell you I couldn't that's my dad of course um so we I didn't answer him I was like look around at it one more time and he
didn't I don't know he's old and Sonic cane you know whatever I understood why he couldn't do it or didn't do it and then I went home and I started working in my studio I have at home and then jumped out of my chair ran in and found him he was on the phone I was like put your phone call on mute I can tell you
what the paintings are about and um I kind of was able to tell them what all my paintings are about I guess which is we are told that we are living in this world of divisiveness and upheaval and uncertainty and fear and just tragedy all around us right that's what we are told we are doing correct
that's the way it's presented to us I want to make artwork that shows you that that is not true that we are living in a world filled with unbearable amounts of love unbearable amounts of gratitude it is I couldn't pick a better time to be alive than right now it's magnificent out there like everybody else have anxieties
about things and visions of the worst case scenarios and blah blah blah blah blah but I don't live in those places I I I can acknowledge them they'll hit me mhm I say something to myself I I I um acknowledge the the love that I have inside myself and How Deeply rooted and connected that is to every other person
on this planet and um keep moving yeah that's all I can do so I want to give people a glimpse of that that that is possible to live that way because I live that way and I wish that all I can I can't wish that everybody live that way all I can do is hope for myself to give people examples of that right yeah that's
it this is one of the harder ones this was this one took harder meaning it it it was there was never a doubt that I was going to get there just the road was really long to get there to get those glasses to be I wanted them to be perfectly imperfect and for the stacks of glasses to somehow make total sense and
absolutely no sense at all mhm and that was that was was really challenging so is this the first one we've seen where it's the black background to start uh no these three these four little guys all started on black as well yeah everything post this piano player is done on that that black this one I'm holding actually was
going to be the fourth one of of that how many hours can you spend on a painting like in a day how much time can be painting I'm good for like 4 to n hours depending on the day um because you can really accomplish quite a lot in four hours if you're just painting if it was a 4our session would
it always be 4 hours straight or might it be two hours and then go do something and then come back and do two hours the beauty of it is not having to have I don't have to have a SC schedule to make paintings that's one of the greatest parts of making art is of momentum is there some benefit of if something's working to get when
it's working you just I just stay yeah I just stay yeah I'd say an average day is six to seven hours of like continuous painting without stopping besides to you know grab a sandwich or go to the bathroom or change the music but I'm staying on I'm staying on the purpose always paint with music it used to be 100% of the time I'd
say now it's 20% podcasts always listening to something and then but also I'd say 30% silence I've been doing a lot of Silent painting so in order will this one be before this one or after this one this it'll go this one this one and this one sort of introduces this this woman into it and
you can see the piano player becomes rather from my way I see it is he is quite enamored with her not just because she's naked just her right that's how I see it when I was painting those drums over and over in my head I just kept saying saying to myself are Blakey art Blakey are Blakey art Blakey like I
wanted to make a drum set that he would want to play and it doesn't much like those champagne glasses it is not right yeah but you could play them you could see how to play them I think I could see how to play them and I don't play drums but uh that's why really enjoyed really enjoyed yeah that's why they they make
sense to me but yeah it's uh I love those drums I was really had a blast with this one I like and these like these tabletops this one in particular I was almost like you know I wanted to paint like a water lies painting and uh but it's the table that was really these are these three guys drinking with the paintings
in the paintings and the wallpapers and everything some of the greatest moments I've ever had in my life creating these paintings was fun to paint the the wine like this guy is like almost like deciding whether he's gonna have a drink he's one he's really to me he's drinking but really thinking of
something and this guy has no question just ready to party to me like he's really there to to throw down MH um yeah this the hand shows trepidation yes yeah and I look in his eye and yeah I I I've made a life of painting skulls and having skulls do things but this series like I really I said I keep calling them guys and
people and like they they really feel alive to like I'm looking at these like they're like the the Crimson ghost you know yeah I met you a handful of years ago but in 2018 I remember reaching out to you and coming over to your house and or up to shanga and talking to you and and you invited
me back to to meet Krishna and through that experience I was able to go meet romdas and I don't know if I've ever properly thanked you for that I don't even think you want me to thank you for that but thank you that was like the most magical thing and nothing happened you know I know there's like a little documentary
that was put out kind of shortly before he passed away where it just shows him going to the beach with a group of people going swimming and then going back and sitting in this room in his house and looking out the window that's exactly what I did I met him on the beach in Maui went for a swim held hands with him on the
beach he stared at me in a way I mean I'm about to cry you know and then went to his house the next day had a my friend will Welsh was interviewing him for GQ great and we sat for 3 hours in his study will was interviewing him but he and I looked at each other in the eye for three hours
and anything that was wrong with my life went away that day and I'm not it's like things will come up and they'll be bad of course but God did I learn how to deal with them better after that experience you know I've always studied and read and I was introduced to romoss as a pretty young kid for my mother gave me be here now
cuz you know I knew she knew I would be into the she knew I'd be into the pictures and she was listening to his lectures and on tapes and I have all of those now too which is really great I knew all these things but to sit with him and have him reflect back to me and will and the world I guess eventually when he put when the
interview came out he will started off Ras had sort of a a go-to explanation of himself right where he would talk about going and being at Harvard and and and then like will asked him a specific question and I can't recall what it was it doesn't matter but he like it it clicked in him like oh I don't have to be like
ramas magazine article version of myself I can just talk to these guys and then it was like magic hour got real this guy who is so incredibly devoted to this loving awareness in the world is still gets pissed off at people and has bad feelings towards people and bad feelings about himself and better and
it's just like you know that but to hear it really come out of his see him say like this close like see him say it he's human yeah he's still human yeah and like he's one of the only people though like he is he was somebody I couldn't look at that way yeah he was too important he knew too much he because
that's what you got when you read the books and stuff and listen to him talk it was like he didn't have a goddamn thing figured out except the love Yeah and how to stay there and that's all we can do MH it's actually pretty easy once you realize that you know I know you're very interested in those thought processes
and all those things as well and that's why I had called to reach out to see you originally is I I needed to talk to somebody because I was going through all kinds of [ __ ] and I couldn't talk my way out of it right I'm not fooling myself to think that I've got it figured out just because I met Romos and he made me
feel a certain way staying in the practice of doing this stuff really helps to keep my my anxiety is all almost zero now I I you know it's the only way I'll get a little anxious if I don't eat enough and have too much coffee and that's a very easy thing to fix just eat something would you say you
were more anxious in the past I went through a really long period of um you can very easily easily correlate anxiety and financial success were they just went and exploded and I had I was living in a state of um crippling panic attacks um where like will Welsh was somebody who um was like my speed dial who I could
call when I was really losing it because when you have a panic attack it feels like the entire world is just [Music] I had had him when I was younger but I wasn't living in a state of them you know and I was living in a state of them I was just I was Silling every painting I could make to every single person on the
planet that meant something and I was [ __ ] miserable so it was in success that you had the panic mhm yeah cuz I have no self-worth whatsoever zero I don't expect to sell paintings I've come to a much different place with it I'm good with it now I look at it totally differently but at that point in time it's really easy to
to understand it I was drinking smoking cigarettes eating pizza and hamburgers and treating myself really really really badly I thought I knew what like these books and stuff were about they were very much a part of my life I was pract I was reading them I thought they were getting in I
wasn't letting them permeate me properly you know i' and i' it's a life's pursuit to to let them do that for you but I don't know a bunch of different things happen and they it's clicked more right some of the things that I see in these books my favorite being the Dow is like the one that I that really resonates
with me I'm I wouldn't call myself a dowst I just practice my version of The Da does that make sense absolutely I don't want any rigidity in it you know and it's I can't Define it for anybody but I know how I practice it I know how I meditate yeah I know how I study these words and I know what they
do for me I think the nature of the da is so open to interpretation anyway that if you read this you can read the words and then read them a year later and they'll mean something completely different totally different what I do is I wake up every morning and that's how I start my day I go I give myself 10 minutes of perfect quiet and
breathing and star staring out a window that's up high in my room do you do this in bed or do you get out of bed no rule typically just describe typically I usually wake up woken up usually because my I have a little I have a two-year-old son so his noise will wake me up my wife usually is the one that will go in and
see him first and I'll just sit there and breathe for 10 minutes and laugh and listen to what's happening in the other room then I'll read a verse of the Dow I actually open my phone and read R there's a ramdas app and every day there's these words of wisdom there's two two to three of them every
day I read those first then I read my Dow verse and then I'm ready to go I'm up and I go see my son Otto and uh that kid is success bro my wife walked in here into my studio one day a mutual friend brought her along on a studio visit randomly and I went outside the parking lot to open the gate and this girl opened the back seat of of
the SUV they got driven here in and stepped out and I've literally lost my breath I was just like who is that and now I'm married to her and have a son congratulations and it's thanks and uh yeah that's success man that love I never wanted it I saw my friends that had kids and I'm I'm going to guess
you prob you probably felt this way you like look at your friends that have kids and you're like ha like your sucks for you you don't get to go do this you don't get to go do that and like luckily I did get to go do all the things and now I'm in my 50s I have two-year-old son and it's like it was the right time for
me these two next yeah they would be next it's just like really I just want you to be in this moment of like there there people are getting to know each other they're playing together like music together they're eating together they're getting to they're meeting each other it's just this it's a party is the
violinist singing To The Man or is he telling him a secret to me he's not even there to me he's more about what I was just talking about but with you know the with death interesting but it's open to interpretation that's interesting um for me that guy is eating he's passing the
lobster as if nothing is going on yeah to me yeah I I feel like he's keeping a straight face because this guy is telling him something it's like he's getting inside information is what I see good yeah two people standing in front of the same thing are going to have the totally different experience with it and that's
what's so much fun right yeah there is a painting that is not here it's in my house currently of the devil Landing he's holding an umbrella and his feet are on the ground in the woods he's been called and he's coming and this is like um that will happen like uh here between these three guys and here will be the Devil he's
landed and this scene it's really inspired by the album cover of uh that song Fire what's that guy's name the you know fire and you know then we'll we have another real quick glimpse of just the normal SE and then you'll see the piano player starts he's up here and and the the um the monkeys are starting to kind of
act a little off and they're taking the instruments and swinging and he's got a lobster and whatever and he's kind of like and then the mon them I really wanted to Showcase these monkeys just really going for it so there's a there's a fourth monkey painting that this Suite of these monkey paintings that's going
on with these are details of this essentially yeah this is like the first time that the monkeys are really starting to act up and then I really wanted to like show them going on going off you know and they're eating lobster and drinking and Swinging From the Chandelier and these are some of the the
most challenging ones these monkeys getting their expressions like I can do a skull with my eyes closed when did the skulls start for you first grade and just started drawing them yeah and you think it started with a drawing or a photograph a a physical skull or maybe seen in a movie for me it was like very specifically like
uh going to this place in New Jersey it was called Dell's novelty and it was a novelty shop that had magic Tri magic tricks and party favors and costumes and all that stuff that guy had all these bins of skulls and the cataloges he gave me some order books of the stuff and those were like those were the thing
those books to order the stuff from MH had the illustrations of the skulls yeah they were like kind of similar to what you saw in the backs of comic books but because some like older weird man had handed me this magical book in this store filled with all this crazy [ __ ] yeah that book
was way more valuable information to me than what I was seeing in the back of a of a comic book I understood do you think your mom's um ey for detail in her work influenced you in any way 100% yeah we're we're like fa similes of each other it's I look a lot like my mom um do you think it's genetic or do you think it's
seeing her do it her modeling it for you it's hard to say my father's Super Creative too he's he writes about jazz my mom is a does her thing my aunt is an art teacher like there's creative people I was just brought up around creative people they definitely didn't encourage me to do this I can say that there was a
lot of buding heads like get a job kind of conversations and I just wouldn't do it just wouldn't do it I got a job when I was five at the pharmacy on Sunday mornings putting newspapers together because the Sunday papers came in sections and you had to put them together and I wanted comic books and toys
and that's how I got them sorry not five eight I was eight and then I worked in a rug store which was all about detail and being around these beautiful rugs and there was a very specific way to unroll them in a very specific way to reroll them and I loved it and I was really I took a lot of pride in how I did it
mhm and then my dad opened his store and I worked in record stores and then in my late 20 mid 20s I started to work at like sort of like Blue Chip art galleries in New York City what motivated you move west it was a couple of things but like I had this idea in 200 N or early 10 that I wanted to come out and
um stay at the Chateau and make a series of drawings on that letter head that you get when you stay there and they print your name on it right what's what started that idea what was it about I been there and I just liked it you know it was just like a place the first time I went there I was just like it's so storied
and I like went and stayed there was the first time I could like afford to stay in a really nice nice hotel expensive hotel so I flew out to LA and I went there and I didn't have like this crazy time there I just I left there feeling like I wanted to be there right MH I get this room my home any
other home I've had in in California and studios I've worked in since I've haven't been able to have Studios it's like and what how what a dump it is when I walk walk through the door there's like I just get this feeling the energy yeah and this place was just a disaster area I bet and I crossed the halfway
point this building is twice as big I crossed the halfway point into the building and I got to the beam that separate separates the space it's C buried in that wall now and I looked in here and I got the chills up my spine I this is itaz anyway to go back to it was like chatau just felt like a place to be for me I
just needed to be there I didn't know why so I long convoluted story as to how I got there I had nothing to you know I had didn't have a pot to piss in really but I found the money I sold some works I I got the money and I went came out here in early 200 11 and rented room 34 in the Chateau and uh lived there like I was supposed to be
there cuz I was supposed to be there I stayed for um 30 days and I made a drawing every day MH then I went back to Brooklyn for a couple weeks then I came back and I I rented the penthouse for a night and threw an exhibition up there and it did really really really well this was another thing that some
person some people that I was working with in New York had discouraged this idea to put it lightly and I was like well I'm doing it however I can do it I'm going to do it and I did it and it changed my life man I met uh a a good buddy of mine Darren romanelli in my room at the hotel he
came in and I was listening to a a live dead show and um he was he's a big dead head and and we got to talk in and he introduced me he he helped me get involved in a project for a Grateful Dead box set and that was all H happening at Rhino you Warner and so I kept having to come out here for meetings with uh the producer
of of like the live dead Rec um releases is a guy named David Lemieux so I was coming out here meeting with him he's like an encyclopedia of Greatful Dead um just a really cool guy and I'd come out to LA I would have the good stay of the chatau I'd have a fantastic time then I'd get back to Brooklyn and I would be around a bunch
of painters and there's just too much negativity going on around me you know there like I don't understand how people have turned art into a [ __ ] competitive sport but they've figured out a way to do it and I was not willing to play that game so I decided I was turning 40 in 2012 and I just decided to come
and move here and I moved into the Chateau Marmont amazing I had no plan in MH and so I just kind of started drawing and making these like paintings on paper basically because that's all I could really pull off in there and uh did another one night exhibition up in the Belushi Bungalow and uh sold it out I would say
in 10 minutes literally it was just like yes this you know and the next and it's not typical for an artist to sell its own work no no that's another that was that was something that that I found that the system that I was presented with to work within was not the one that I was willing to do at the
time tell me tell me about the system I I really know very little about the art world what's the typical path I don't know if there's a typical one but the relationship between a gallery and anart artist is you it can at the level that I was operating at which was sort of not emerging but not some you know there
like emerging artists and mid-career artists and late career artists I was in between emerging in mid and there's just sort of this like indentured servitude that you feel by the people involved in the gallery system you feel like you work for the gallery when you have a gallery they try to make you feel that
way yes that's not a game I'm G to play I'm not going to do that so the very short version of the long story I didn't say is like I wanted to come to the Chateau the people I was working with said no we're not going to help you financially to do that get a Kickstarter and maybe you can get and I didn't even know what that
was they showed me what that was I was like I'm not doing that you couldn't pay me to do that well if you're not going to do it then you're not doing that project and I said I quit on the spot I quit yeah give me the couple things you have my trucks outside yeah I'm out called The Collector sold
the big painting got 40 Grand in my pocket and spent it all to live at The Chateau for 30 days and rolled it and it turned turned into more than that and then more than that then more you know these are the sort of the times though where I was like getting like anxiety and panicky
and Tweaky about things and I just kept i' answer the phone and it' be the best news in the world and I would have a panic attack what's the call you would get that would put pressure on you that was what so difficult is cuz it didn't feel like pressure to me in my mind but my body felt it that way I guess and my
mind subconsciously was doing that to me I don't know it was just like so and so of world renown would like to come meet you and buy a painting and those calls were like happening like not like once but like weekly you know and I'm so than thankful for it yeah I mean yeah yeah but tell me that tell me where the
anxiety came from that what do you think it is I really don't know I mean the only thing I can answer for the only thing that I can think of is having no selfworth of of any kind I'm a tall guy I'm covered in tattoos I'm relatively well spoken bird uh educated enough I got a good head on my shoulders and stuff financially
succeeded in this world and up to a certain point I just like hated myself so that's sort of like the end of act one for the lack of a better term and then what happens is like all the guys decide okay this devil has arrived and we have to beat it and so they this is kind of like almost like a the moment like a wonder twins
activate moment where like they all kind of they decide to become this band of guys that are going to go out and kill the devil so these are sort of portraits of all of those gentlemen kind of like all right we're going to go do this and in that the piano player becomes the main guy to me what's
happening here is that minion guy from one of the very early paintings has is helping the devil raise the dead that's here that's what's Happening Here I see that's a really crazy little painting you really need to look at like it's not I love making these small ones there's such a different skill set than
the larger ones the tightness and and whatever I was talking about this little bird and then you see him here and what I've done what for me what he is doing is presenting these guys with the opportunity to read the da that's what this is wow so if you look at it there's writing on it but I I wrote I wrote a verse of
the Dow across those two pages but I wrote it in a way that you can't read it but it is written yeah I don't know this painting has been a real mystery yeah I like it thank you very much it it happened um really fast this was like a one where I came in and I was like okay I'm just going to see what happens
with this I found some photograph of two nuns that I liked and there was some was just this old black and white photo of two nuns and all these like leaves where do you think the light source is in this this painting is actually called the fire of mystery yeah this this heat this fire these scenes of like this red like
Darkness with the fire showing or these red skies that happen in the fire reflecting on things that it's kind of start they going to start to see a lot like I we don't know yeah for me what's Happening Here is is this is the night and in the morning he's like saying goodbye to her he's going to
go find the devil and kill him with his friends and they're saying goodbye I called this painting the shaman it's like this this Lobster Shaman The Man the painting that comes directly after this is this really [ __ ] up Vision painting that I made um so like that Shaman is kind of he sees that Shaman
and what he's seeing in his mind is this this Mayhem this is the first big one this is the only one this big too this one's really this is a large large painting so I went from this little postage stamp one to this and then a couple more and then then I showed DH and then that's what kind of made the encouragement of his excitement
by these was what kind of pushed me to to Really I had the idea but I and I and I saw this as maybe being you know 20 paintings I tell a little story cute little story that I didn't even know you yeah I just really wanted to show that I know what it feels like to get inside your head and see the
worst possible thing happening it makes no sense none of it makes any [ __ ] sense whatsoever why you're having the thought doesn't make too much sense why it has to be the worst possible thought doesn't make any sense I don't even know what this is I have no idea what is happening in this painting
yeah but I really had to make it and I really had fun making it you remember what the original um inspiration for the layout was was there a source uh well I had a couple of images of the lobby cards for the moon Riders cial so I put them on there and it kind of felt like this weird Valley with I was like let's put this woman in here
what's that going to be all about and then I was like there really should be some lobsters in here MH I don't know why but they have to be here and then these different devil heads started floating and then and it was I painted it there where those paintings are and I lived there until just a couple of weeks ago when we
decided to kind of lay the paintings out into a an order cuz I you know we're making a an exhibition catalog when it's shown in the gallery it'll be in order I hope it will work in the space to be in order I mean it's going to be set across six large rooms M and how long does the show go up for honestly
don't know haven't asked yeah for me the devil's we're about to raise and we're dead that's what's happening here and we're in the midst of like our our hero um you know going on this crazy Journey um where he's really going to be faced with a lot of these challenges of the devil this is just like a snap like
a like scene of the Devil by himself about to do I don't know what but to me he's this one is uh I would call this painting about 86% finished I will be finishing it this weekend this one yes I just need to detail some things everything is on it mhm there may be another line of grass up there or but the
skulls and the lobsters and the clock need some just final details for me mm um this was really fun and very challenging painting this globe inside this mon inside this SK um this one's this one's called I believe it's called Global Resurrection yes that's Global Resurrection what was your first
tattoo uh I got a little um like crappy line drawing version of uh of um uh uh Jimmy Hendrick flying flying eyeball that like Rick Rick Griffin had drawn from a Jimmy Hendrick concert poster on my ankle I think I was like 16 this place in Jersey Tattoo 46 a big old biker dude gave me the tattoo and how' you pick the
image you know it picked me I think you know I just walked in there and you didn't know before you walked in what it no idea I just wanted it I just wanted my first tattoo m i was obsessed with tattoos cuz spending all that time in New York City I was seeing tattoos in chadam New Jersey you didn't see tattoos
but being in the East Village you saw people with tattoos and they were the scariest people on the street CU they had tattoos tattoos were you know they weren't fashionable they were a way of marking yourself as like the outside yeah and I mean I had friends growing up after we had gotten out of high school but we're still like
around the area they'd come home from college and stuff and like their parents didn't want me to come over because I had tattoos you know that was a thing and then all of a sudden a lot of it I was like I was working at a tattoo shop I was an apprentice in a tattoo shop when I got out of high school in Jersey and
uh this is 91 but say say that was one of the last truly fantastic moments in American Music at least for me was that era so at that point in time like then the music that was coming up that became so big all these guys had tattoos and it was like changing the world it was changing fashion it was changing the tastes of
the world that music Anthony was like literally the most beautiful man on the planet at that time and he had the most amazing beautiful tattoos and like uh like it changed people's perception of tattoos like right I saw it happen in the tattoo shop live like we were tattooing like thugs from the oranges in
Jersey and like garbage man and frat guys with their frat logos and stuff so you worked in the tattoo Salon yeah I was like a I would draw and make needles um do you make needles you soldered them together like you'd buy you'd get packs of needles you have a bar and you'd solder them together you
had jigs you put x amount of needles in The Jig solder them together it was a patience a lot of patience to do that but you got good at it and I would take pride in being good at it you know that was a great time and like the music was so crazy again not to keep blowing smoke up your ass but you were making a lot of it
um and I was working at this tattoo shop and at the same time there there was like a sort of like real uh wave of like the Rave scene happening in New York and I went with my boss at the tattoo shop uh this guy Carrie brief was his name is his name and uh we went to the Limelight on a Wednesday to this party
old church yes went to this party called disco 2000 that was this like amazing part it was [ __ ] crazy man nothing like it on the plan I'd never seen anything like it the club kids that were like on whatever I remember they were on like a talk show one day in the afternoon they were on like a Donahue type show or something
like that I knew all these guys were guys I was hanging out with but then also on it was Tuesday Wednesday was disco 2000 Tuesday or Thursday I can't remember which one was like the industrial night with like Ministry and when you first walked and we were talking about you know 9 in I was
listening to 9in nails like they were playing that and stuff like that that was also a crazy party it was so cool to go there on Wednesday and the freaks that were into that scene were there and then the next night a whole other subgenre of New York City and the surrounding burus would show up for this
party and it was so special did you ever go to Limelight absolutely I me it was that was that couldn't happen today I don't think there was an incredible club scene in New York all through the time that I lived there yeah nothing like it yeah there was that NASA which was down next to Wetlands and then uh Club USA opened I
remember Webster I remember going to like Webster Hall opening night with Michael Alec that guy that ran this Party Disco 2000 and he like ended up killing a drug dealer and packing his body up and going to prison forever and I there's a movie about him wow he was my boss boss um I got paid 75 bucks to go to the club
and have fun you know was really cool I remember there was like a room way up in the back of the back of the back of the VIP area that HR gger had done like all this furniture was like all sculptural stuff that he had made that was so cool unbelievable I finished this last night at the house really good thank you yeah
I did this one like uh at this guy yeah the cloud monster fun there's one up here too there's this weird life yeah yeah yeah and I think oh yeah and here there's another like one of these little beast clouds those are talking to that that guy James enzer that I brought up earlier over there when you see these
little weird monsters and whatever that are kind of floating through here you don't really understand them they're kind of a cross between things that would happen in an enzor painting and those little rubber finger puppets that we had when we were remember those little monsters like I'm obsessed with
those things I always I bought them at Dell's novelty um and uh yeah so this is him seeing this whole this is like a if you they're not the same size but you could almost call this like a tryptic of a of a scene of what's happening to him so they would go yeah they feel at least these feel completely related this one
when you explain what it is makes sense what's happening here just one of the journeys there's a moment this painting I made twice with two different figures remember in like cartoons especially Road Runner Cartoons where it would be like he'd be running and the background would stay the same would
like repeat yeah yeah I wanted to like nod to that there's this one and there's a larger version of it down there um just the journey painting this section of the journey is like really strong and I feel like the beginning is also really thorough the end I could technically add to it will get to the end but the end just
kind of start to feel like it's the beginning again I see there's definitely things that are happening in the end it could very much be happening in the beginning and I wanted that yeah you know he's still continuing on his journey he's on his journey then they kind of are like a group of them have
come together they're in absolute Hellfire the biggest evil as devil is watching over them in absolute darkness and they're just reading the Dow like I they for that scene they don't they I wanted to paint them as though it's incredibly calm yeah that they're calm for me they're calm yes you I sense that they're calm I
really really had fun with this painting I'm very very happy at this moment yeah the monkey knows something oh yeah I believe this is called One Tree Hill yeah after the You2 song I love you then the next one the devil's taking the castle and the tree is vacant and dead and uh yeah so this is almost like
he's back here in this area and he thinks the devil is gone M but he catches one of these guys to me he's caught one of these skeletons and in these two here and here he's they're like interrogating this skeleton to like where the [ __ ] is the devil where did he go um this is the first painting that started all of this
wow the Inquisition yeah so which is kind of fitting yeah this one was great so the lobsters there actually one of these little monsters is in it like the whole framework of what I was going for happened in this one little painting and you could see why this you sit down and you paint this out of nowhere on a
Tuesday afternoon for no particular reason whatsoever you could see why I felt the the necessity to explore it a little bit further you know it's like the entrance to hell yeah because as you and is that the moon sure like a very like bad van go Moon Yeah on purpose yeah yeah bad van go
yeah yeah and it's really like it just kind of keeps coming in and being the cave too like the way I painted the the Shine off the Moon is just like the cave too this one is also like I've got these three in here that need work it's that one one that's behind here now the devil in the field of skulls and this so
that's after I do this last painting then I'm going to come back and just do the touchup those are the fun bits where you're like it's like mixing something I guess you know yeah just like I made them I started them I got them to a place and then I was like okay I'm GNA just finish it in at the end I can
wait till the end so these are scenes in he has taken the woman away to hell so we have more raising of the dead I don't know if that's the devil or if that's the devil or if they're both the devil I don't know what's going on she ain't standing there in the shadows like not understanding what she's seeing and so that's kind of this next
stretch is just going back starting over going out on this journey in the night here's sort of that repetition of like that I was saying like the Road Runner cartoon repetition this is like a bigger version of that one down there in the darkness this one's a banger wow that's wild water comes into the
equation here in this painting which I think is a pivotal moment I don't know why but it just is and they get chains around him MH and set him on fire he just sets himself on fire I don't know what happens but the devil dies up there [Music] wow so this would preclude this MH yeah this is like some little pocket
of the woods all of this is going on and then they get him and then he turns to hell or he burns and then it kind of this is just this is the devil dead just laying dead and he looks really happy about it and the birds there yeah little mandolin guys here singing a song yeah yeah just like yeah that just to me just
felt like a little like it's it's probably from some like uh Dance macabra Art from back in the day that was the source and then like so then I I I did this as this big zoom and then I wanted to like it's like spring has kind of sprung here yeah and so this is just right after this it's poof he's
gone we have our little guy he's still playing there's new colors there's much less happening it's just him this other guy can see the like this light Has Lifted the little bird has come and sat on his hand he's reunited with the girl all these beautiful flowers are falling tell me about that moment when you're making something and
you feel like I have to walk away what would the what would be an example where would you be in the project and what would the voice say I mean there was when I first started to paint I was I would draw so much right and I was really confident in my drawing and then I'd get in front of a canvas and I would just fail
instantly and then I'd just paint over it and then I'd start something else I mean you talk about this in your book too it's like you the you walk away from it on a Tuesday and you feel like it's the greatest thing you've ever done in your life and on Wednesday morning it is dog [ __ ] yeah and it is yeah dog
[ __ ] so from like when I really started to paint I would say I was like 25 so from like 25 to 40 I drew and then I painted and when I moved to California you drew first and then painted the drawing I would say I no I would paint yeah this much yeah and I drew this much yeah in my practice I see so I spent
like 15 years predominantly drawing my drawings would get big they'd get complicated they were really you know I'm proud of them they were remarkable and Hyper derivative of certain people very much on purpose because I looked at those people that I admired and I looked at how they worked and that's what they did they
looked at the people that they liked before them and they copied the [ __ ] over and over and over and over and over and over again I think one main difference in music is that it is quite possible to become hyper successful as a musician when you're a teenager and still be really [ __ ] good at it when you're 70
years old it's possible it's possible but not often not often but it's possible yes is possible painting it's not possible it's not possible you just have to grow into it you have to grow yeah you have to have a life experience because paintings are generally not about I don't know this is not going to
be right either but you could write a song when 18 about the girl that broke up with you when you were 17 and it could become a classic song for the rest of time you can't paint a painting at 18 to to create that same thing at 18 with a canvas one person I know of has done that that was boscat like he he did it
all by the time he was 27 years old and he had a Mastery of the history of very specific history of but a Mastery of it and he liked all the artists that I liked and that I looked up to and he had this way of looking he created a way of art all art is talking to Art that came before it he had a way of taking art and
turning it into the first book down record for me this sampling and layering and bravado and mystery and violence and romance that were like it was they were ident like they identical to each other to me visually and sonically those are the closest like that's how I can put them together seeing his work for the first
time did the same thing to me that that boogie down record did to me what was the first time he came across his work I was in my like I was probably like 24 something like that never heard of him before that and a girl my girlfriend at the time gave me a book for my birthday and I was like what is this MH paintings
didn't look like that before no it was a new language yeah and he was dead by the time I saw it but not that dead yeah you know no he was his just around in the same places that you were yes yeah no time ago and I spent like a you know a really and I'm still hyper influenced by him hyper hyper hyper influenced but
unapologetically yeah somebody comes in like I've had people come in here and be like that looks like a BOS scat and I'll say thank you yeah thank you very very very much yeah because I've I dove headlong into understanding him and his process and what motivated him and the corollaries were so strong between us
minus the fact that I'm a white guy and he's a black guy oh there were so many things that happened and the things we were both drawn to were so similar I felt like you know art is a conversation music is a conversation um you're talking to the people that did it before you and I decided to have a
really really indepth conversation with Jean Michelle basat and find what that could do for me I remember just being like At first being like really scared of it and like wanting to like that's where I would get lost on a canvas is I would try to not do the very thing that I should be doing
which was talk honestly and openly and copy what the hell that guy had done and then I embraced the conversation and my life changed drastically and that's when those phone calls started coming and the the great opportunities started rearing their heads and and like just like yes I am am doing that I am openly publicly telling
you I spent my life copying what that guy did and making my own new fresh version of it because it is markedly different than what he did but the structure is the same identical structure because the guys that I looked at that's what they did and then all of a sudden they didn't need to do it
anymore and I'm just over the last couple of years feeling like that I have done something unique in here that is mine and I know that great I had no plan other than that first little painting and being told not to do it and then that encouragement from Damian and then sort of sort of set this parameter on myself
that I had never done before which was to make a gigantically ambitious body of it there's 96 of these paintings I've never made 96 paintings that went together how you pick the number it was just kind of thrown at me by a friend like that you can get there like if you do that many you should feel done and I started doing it
and that number for like the first hour after hearing that suggestion I was like I I can't do that that's insane you know that's crazy I'm just one guy then I came to the studio the next day and I made one and I was like well there's one of them come back tomorrow and do another one and this turned into like
I've had many challenges with them as far as pushing myself and my technical abilities and finding things inside of myself that I didn't know that I had and I will not say that it has been easy but it has been effortless yeah and I've had no self-doubt because I I had no point where I after that
first hour of saying I couldn't do it yeah and once I said I can do it I did it great and I never was like no I'm not going to do this I can't I I can't go on another day about two weeks ago my assistant Ben was with me and we were in my house Studio I love painting at my house CU I get to be around my son and my wife
and not have to drive anywhere um and I was kind of like I'm skitting sick of this I was at like 90 I was like I just can't do any more of these and instead of L I just had to say it yeah and then I went right up to a canvas and I did the goddamn thing and then I got really excited about it again I really fell in love with the whole
process all over it's amazing how even a small breakthrough yeah changes the whole picture changes our understanding of what's Happening yeah you know I can never do I will never do this again and then even a glimpse of something interesting is enough to just erase that yeah yeah like those battles that you
have with yourself they they never go away yeah but they get a hell of a lot easier to win right yeah in a shorter period of time yeah I've always won them yeah but some of those were 12 rounds and they were draws you know I've been going in and like having like early Mike Tyson fights with my paintings you know
and like that is a good feeling this was the first one that had water in it but it was just this reflection and it was in the distance and I had a really hard time letting myself paint the water I don't know why because none of them had had water and I just was like there can't be water there
it doesn't make sense but I did it anyway and then it came to be one of the ways that I could talk about what I wanted to talk about yeah differentiate early part of the story from the world changed yeah and so now this is like the end they are back at this Castle everybody's sort of crow and they're dressed up I
want him to feel like he's like touched Yeah by like everybody being thankful for what he did yeah cuz he doesn't really feel like he did anything anything except what he had to do yeah you can see gratitude I wonder what this one's called coronation and then yeah there's just you know they're going to party again
mhm he and the girl are are dancing and Fiddle players playing and he's had her portrait painted and hung in the house and there then he's finally just had rest doing nothing mhm back with a fruit plate great so that's them all that's all of them it's a great story real Adventure amazing amazing um
ride that you went on in your head yeah for this to come out it is just really kind of crystallizing that I understand that I'm really all I'm doing is just reiterating what I'm learning yeah over over and over and over again you're seeing you're seeing an image and then you're seeing where that image fits in the story
yeah but I I really do think it all just circles back to the Dow practice tell me about the first time um your work was hung in a museum well I remember in 2003 I got a call that um the MoMA had bought a suite of drawings of mine from a gallery that I was working with at the time but I never went to see it
installed but I'm pretty sure it was installed in this collection um but then in 2014 I had sold stuff stuff to museums in Europe but I had never gone to see any of it but then in 2014 I was given an opportunity to do like a sort of survey show at a place in Denmark called the Aros Museum which is in a tiny college
town called arus um it's one of the most magical towns I've ever been to in my life they came to my studio in Brooklyn because I was still there when this was conceived but then by the time it was happening I was living here but the idea was to replicate my studio in Brooklyn inside of the museum because my studio is you know
it's interesting place and the one in Brooklyn was smaller and jammed up and different it had a different vibe I was a different person so I lived at at a little apartment around the corner from the museum for a month and went and worked in the studio that they built me a footprint of Brooklyn in the museum
and I went there and made paintings and made it covered in paint and pinned little pictures all over the place and shipped my books like everything it was it was really cool that was the most memorable experience I've had with a museum other things have gone to museums over the years but I've never gone to to visit
them do you think there's a spiritual aspect to your work for myself absolutely it's my it's my practice it's my it's my uh way of one of the ways I can meditate and I can do it for many many many many hours um Zone you just Zone and I don't have to talk that's one of the great things about this job is I don't have to speak
to anybody to do it so I can sit in absolute silence alone or even if there's music I mean you know what music can become the soundtrack to a silence that you need uh even though it's on it becomes that headp space you need creates an internal silence right like a good song Can can quiet your mind like nothing
else I I think I touched on it earlier is like I would like for my paintings to make people feel something to feel a desire to look at the world in a different way one of the greatest things that happened in my work life my my uncle it was very close to my Uncle Bill and he um had made me a copy of
um the power of intention the Wayne Dyer um lecture that and he gave it to me and at the time I had this big wall of CDs in my uh studio and I was about to start a project for art bosel in 2004 I think it was and he had given me this this stuff I took it put it in my CD case couldn't even see it
and I went to reach up for something and it's like this set of discs just shot out and landed on the floor and I picked it up thought of my uncle walked over put it in my 6 CD changer turned it on started this group of drawings I was going to do I drew all these drawings of myself dressed dressed up as a zombie from a
Halloween costume that I had had and all I did was draw myself with a snake coming out of my head and blood all over me and I just wrote everything he was saying that meant something to me on these drawings all over them and I just listened to it for like a month and then I went to Miami we installed the stuff I had no
expectations of any kind I wasn't killing it by any stretch of I was making a living but I wasn't and then um I was just going to the beach and hanging out with friends and doing whatever during the day every 10 minutes my phone kept ringing sold another one sold another one sold another one sold another one
um that was a turning point where I where I had always been writing on stuff but what I was writing changed and what I was putting out changed um the I took that was a stepping stone in my life where I was treating myself badly but I needed to treat myself better and I had a moment where I did it and it made work that I
was really proud of and it and it succeeded in helping me and it succeeded by going out into the world world as well and it they was successful in a many Myriad of ways so that started a practice for me where I was really intentionally placing these texts that I was studying into my artwork all the
time and it was the beginning of me really truly getting to make a real living at this amazing yeah let's look at the Dow and I want you to randomly open to a page and read to me what's there and let's see how it impacts what we're feeling today you know what just do this this is really easy okay get the Dow app
everybody it's really easy can you pick a random one I just did great without going out the door you can know the world without looking out the window you can see Heaven the farther you travel the less you know thus the wise person knows without traveling understands without seeing accomplishes without acting temp