This was for the first installment of Good Leaders, Endangered Species, Ships at Sea, at Lightbox gallery in Los Angeles in the spring of 2008. I hoped, with the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama (along with John McCain!), that the poetry of the narrative allegory would resonate in that intense political climate, we needed “Good Leaders,” as they were like an “Endangered Species,” in a world and America that was a “Ship at Sea.”
James Dean has always been a hero for me. A gay man (or at the very least “Hollywood bisexual”!) Dean was sugar-daddied up on his way to fame—his many homosocial and homoerotic encounters and “friendships” are well documented and true. A great artist, Dean wanted to be a master, and be on the Mount Olympus of culture with Picasso and Michelangelo and more. He strove mightily, a true “hero’s journey,” as his mother died young, he was cast off by his hapless father to live with his cousins in Indiana, but knowing he didn’t fit in, worked intensely to get out—to Southern California to eventually go to UCLA for acting. This lasted a short while, as he began to get successful bit acting jobs, and on the recommendations (and connections) of his older male producing boyfriend, came to NYC, started acting in theater, Elia Kazan “discovered” him for East of Eden (which I believe the original photo is an outtake from), and the rest is history. In just a couple of years and three movies, James Dean changed culture, bringing his sensitivity and Method Acting ways to his roles, he was able to suture into his characters his own life spirit, a queer man who loved life, and like his hero The Little Prince, bringing about a new awareness of what it was like to be young, smart, confident yet questioning—also like Hamlet—to “wake” people from the everyday life of the super conservative ’50s to a new world.
Elvis was inspired by Dean, as was most of rock ‘n’ roll and the beginnings of the beatniks, hippies, and boomer generation. I don’t think I would be the same person without him and his influence, and I love trying to channel him, bringing my own life into his character like he did in his acting. Sometimes when I’m painting figures who have passed away, I feel in my latest night moments as if I’m like a medium, bringing into being a consciousness into the persona I’m portraying, and their essence comes through. The background here was flowers, but from a low angle with a high perspective, like the Japanese prints Van Gogh and Gauguin loved that inspired them to have high horizon lines (or none!) in their works.
The same is happening here, but also inspired by Shojo manga (Japanese comics for girls, that have emotive symbolic backgrounds behind characters to emulate aesthetically their emotions, also like the prints that came before them), I hope the flowers convey a synesthetic feeling. More than this, as I paint from material that may be out of focus in the original image (and in this case, from a black-and-white photo), how it’s not like the photo is what is “me” about it. in the abstraction of the out of focus imagery, I hope that by painting the distortions as if they are real, that my unconscious also spills out into my brush. If oil painting was created to make things look more “real” than any other medium, perhaps it can create dream space/time from our inner minds that also feels palatable and real. Not that I’m any medium, but if I’m channeling these characters, when their essence comes through, hypothetically maybe I could also paint a portal into the world from which the consciousness apparated from—in this case heaven? The Mount Olympus of James Dean’s dreams?
Whatever the case may be, like the watch face on his wrist, we are only on this mortal coil for a short while in the eons of existence, and better make the most out of what we have been given while our consciousness has the vehicles of our bodies in which to operate. James Dean did well with his very short time on Earth before he died at age twenty-four, I can only hope that I’ve been working as hard as I can and trying my very best to make art that might be able to tell stories for a culture to understand itself in order to progress (and teaching, and loving my husband, family, and friends, too!). Having Dean as an ultimate icon and idol (I’m working on his biography as a graphic novel to be published by Fantagraphics one day soon—and this image will be part of it!), I hope to make great art that will stand the test of time, with my spirit in the vehicle of the painting to speak positively to future worlds—perhaps like the flowers in the painting this is a romantic notion, but as Dean says in Rebel Without a Cause as his character Jett Rink, “You gotta do something. Don’t you?”
Judy Garland, in a scene from the film The Good Old Summertime, swings around a pole during her performance of “I Don’t Care,” a powerful, pre-feminist tune sung by one of the most influential entertainers of the twentieth century. I love Judy Garland—she is a hero… She was one of the greatest entertainers of the twentieth century, and like Elvis, brought real emotion and life into her songs and into her acting. She was a strong-willed woman, and I believe part of her appeal is that she always fought for her agency in a patriarchal culture that strove to take it away in its exploitation of her as a talent and as a woman.
But Judy always fought back and succeeded in having many comebacks in her career. The weekend she died tragically, finally succumbing to the pressures around her, the Stonewall bar in NYC was raided by the police. The gay men there, beset by grief from the death of their idol, decided to rage against this oppressive force in the Stonewall Rebellion that gave birth to the LGBT civil rights movement.
Postmodernism, I think if I could put it into a nutshell, it’s about agency being reified into capital… It’s like agency, our spirit, our soul, our position as individuals reified—like flour into pizza dough, being folded into capital… I feel we live in a corporate commodity culture now where a lot of our ideas are decided and contained by committee. Somebody like Judy Garland or Elvis, who is almost like the brother of Judy Garland, in a way, were these people who had incredible talent, were able to feel through the lyrics of their songs the real emotion that made their performances so alive. James Dean, the great method actor was so moved after seeing Judy perform, he was flabbergasted— “How does she do it?!” He wanted to be just as powerful as Judy.
Joseph Campbell’s idea of an artist was that the artist was supposed to tell stories for a culture to understand itself to progress… I feel that these people were like that, they were artists who were able to channel a new way of being for others to follow. Here, Judy is singing “I don’t care,” not wanting to concede to patriarchy and their views.
My husband and I love Amsterdam, and I dearly love Elvis, so this image in a way is the best of both worlds, but also bittersweet, as this photo was taken near the Anne Frank House in that historical city. For our fortieth birthday blowout, I had a show in Brussels, and Andrew and I did our version of the “Grand Tour,” including staying blissfully in Amsterdam, also home of two of our favorite museums, the Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh. As we were walking through the streets on the way to the Anne Frank House, I spotted a framed photo of Elvis, from his famous ’68 Comeback Special, where he had the sit-down acoustic session with his original band members, wearing the leather outfit that became so iconic. I wanted the photo, but Andrew said no, so I took this photo instead, with the double reflection of me holding up my camera phone, with Amsterdam in the background and the image of Elvis in the front.
This is one of the first paintings I exhibited from my own photography—I was weaning myself away from appropriation, wanting to “own” the entirety of the image, and have my personal life be hopefully allegorical for greater things. I love painting reflections and distortions from photos as if they are “real”—I think that reflections and shadows sometimes reveal a “soul” to the conscious goings-on in an image, and as my conscious mind is describing what it sees, my “left brain” can’t totally understand the abstracted and deconstructed images of reflections and shadows, etc., and perhaps, like Cézanne projecting onto a landscape that breaks into abstraction, this might happen when I paint abstracted images of otherwise contained and conscious imagery.
Elvis was a “fat joke” when I was a kid growing up in the ’70s; when he died, I was more interested in Bowie than Elvis. I took him for g ranted for years, but when I finally saw the comeback special (officially called just Elvis), it was a revelation. Here was one man—who building on all the soul music and rock ‘n’ roll—albeit begat by mostly the great African American musicians before him (that he was friends with and that he acknowledged, still important to recognize the colonization by white people and producers of this history), along with hillbilly music, “changed culture.” The story goes that Elvis had “sold out,” Colonel Tom Parker, his famous man-ager, and the entertainment industry had “neutralized” Elvis after he came back from the Army, and instead of touring, they had him on an endless cycle of B movies that made a lot of money for the studios and for Elvis, but had little effect on the culture that he helped to erupt from his early sublime Sun Studios and RCA recordings and amazing performances on The Ed Sullivan Show and the like. The producer of the special loved Elvis, however, and to have him become “woke,” took him after a meeting along a walk on Sunset Boulevard, and Elvis was unnerved that few people recognized him or cared. He allowed the producer to bring out the best of him (instead of the sanitized Christmas special the Colonel had hoped for), and for the first time in years Elvis rocked, going back to his roots, with the highlight being the sit-down acoustic section where he performed with his original Sun Studios group (that inspired the MTV acoustic sessions and so much more).
Being in Amsterdam, totally out of location for Elvis, and ourselves, near Anne Frank, this became almost like a memento mori still life, instead of skulls, a reminder of mortality, and the fleetingness of fame. Anne Frank was so amazing as a young woman writing about the plight of her family and all the Jews and peoples that were being murdered in the Holocaust, and she wanted to be a great writer to tell people of their plight—and this, as tragic as it was, became performative, as truly she was exactly what she wanted to be, and generations of people have been so moved and influenced by her and her writing. Elvis, as dichotomous as this may seem to bring up in the same conversation, also was a great spirit who wanted to move the world with his art and make it a better place, as he did. I hope in my work to be able to tell stories for a culture to under-stand itself for it to progress, and although life is fleeting, am doing my best in my art, life, and teaching to bring to the world all I can to enlighten and inspire. As the image here falls into surreal abstraction, I hope the soul of all we do and can accomplish opens up into a dreamscape, although melancholic, of optimistic hope of art to translate across the globe in a universal hope to transcend into a wonderous future.
Tommy Kirk was a ’50s Disney child star, most known for his roles in the Shaggy Dog series, The Absent-Minded Professor, Old Yeller, The Misadventures of Merlin Jones, and this, Swiss Family Robinson. When these films came out, I wasn’t yet born, but would see the movies as rerun kid matinees and on television. There was always something about him and his roles that were different—it was the smart loner, kind of a romantic, gentle, but cool and different kid. When I was a kid, I don’t know if I had a crush on him, but I was attracted to him in a way I couldn’t really describe. I identified with his gentleman kid persona, and the movies were fun. As I got older, I realized he had been a gay actor—he was fired by Disney for making out with an extra outside the set and had another short-lived career later as an older teen/young man in “hip” cool beach movies, Mars Needs Women and more. Sadly, he got into drugs—it was hard and lonely for him to be gay and the time when this was still subjugated against, especially in the film business but also for his personal life. He ended up retiring from acting but had a successful carpet-cleaning business and retired to the wilderness on a nice pension.
I thought this image was cool, kind of like a David vs. Goliath. Even though he had a “kid next door” allure he was somehow always different, and in his roles, usually the loner, and/or made outcast from the core group, including family. In this image, although he is throwing a slingshot, I think to gather food for his family, it seemed like it was so primal, this queer kid in the jungle, throwing a slingshot to the giant of the humanity that tries to suppress and repress him. Tommy Kirk was always out and proud to be gay for his whole post-acting life and off drugs and a successful businessman. Although it might not have been the career he sought, at least he did it his own way and didn’t let it get him down but won in his personal life. I wonder about so many gay men of a different generation, we know the ones who survived as out gay people, but so many probably had sad lives of oppression.
This image represents to me a fighting back, a standing up for oneself, and promise for myself and other LGBTQ people of my generation can serve also as models for successful, queer, and happy individuals who don’t allow the system to bring it down, but to fight on and win.
This painting was from the first installment of the series "Good Leaders, Endangered Species, Ships at Sea," an installation juxtaposing in a deliberate sequence to create a poetic allegory of images, oil paintings of iconic figures from popular and political cultural history are exhibited along with images of animals that are truly endangered in our fragile ecology, next to pictures of vessels striving to overcome seemingly insurmountable storms, symbolizing an optimistic outlook that we can healthily triumph through the chaotic crises of our time.
In this work, Shirley Temple makes an appearance from the film The Little Princess as she dreams herself to be a benevolent leader as her character in the film makes a valiant struggle to overcome hardship. One of my husband’s and now my favorite films, Shirley Temple plays a character whose wealthy father leaves her a private school, only for her to lose everything when they believe the father, who went off to fight in a war, dies. She is then made to become a servant for the mean girls in the school, who treat her with contempt. Shirley Temple—being Shirley Temple—doesn’t make a fuss about their treatment of her, only wishes for the future, befriending the other servant girl at the school, and making constant visits to the Vet hospital to find her returning missing father, who she refuses to believe is dead. There is a terrific dream sequence, that this film still comes from, where she, playing a queen, protects the kind adults who protect and support her by admonishing the cruel school matron that subjugates her in real life, and is encouraged by the young couple’s love for one another—they save themselves by giving each other the kiss that the witchy matron accuses them of stealing. Shirley as queen then witnesses herself self-actualize, when she watches her doppelganger be the star of a little ballet. She wakes up to the benevolent mysterious neighbors gift of a warm breakfast and new clothes for she and her friend, which gives her the encouragement to continue to pursue her dreams, finding her father by the end of the film and getting to meet the Queen!
I love Shirley Temple, who in her real life was one of the most famous, wealthiest actors of her time as a child star, giving the nation and world hope through her bright spirit during the time of the depression, and later in life, becoming a benevolent Republican stateswoman, and one of the first celebrities to come out as having Breast Cancer, announcing it to the world and popularizing the idea to check and help cure the disease. She was a "Good Leader" in both her life and her art, and a model for many. Warhol always idolized her, and I’m surprised he didn’t make more images of her (if any?), and it was inspiring for me to paint her during our own recession, and she inspired hope in me as much as any audience member in her heyday.
I created this work as part of my "Good Leaders, Endangered Species, Ships at Sea" series—during the time for the national elections I thought we needed Good Leaders, because they were like Endangered Species in a world that was like a Ship at Sea. I think everyone can hopefully agree that we need endangered species not to be so endangered in our world, and if we can all agree that these animals, in general, are beautiful, sentient creatures that deserve to live in an unsoiled environment, that can be a common meeting ground that we can all converge to figure out ways that we can help to sustain the world and all the flora and faun upon it for us and future generations of the world. I love whales, and the idea of whales being these incredibly intelligent, conversing entities that are living in the world with us almost like underwater intelligent alien beings of their own watery kingdom. I went to grad school at UC Irvine in Orange County, and lived in Laguna Beach, which was beautiful, but also becoming polluted, and the art scene they were very proud of, becoming a little—while I don’t want to be hierarchal about art and taste—cheesy. One of the kings of populist art in Southern California is Robert Wyland, who has famously painted whales on murals, canvas, and other surfaces, and has his own series of galleries, t-shirts, and more. Not to say anything bad about Wyland—I think he has his own true mission in art, and I really believe in "art for the people," and while being perhaps truly about acknowledging animals within our marine worlds in order to save them, I felt my mission in creating art with animals was to NOT make cheesy art. How could I bring something intrinsically artful to a whale image? I chose one from the NY Picture Library that seemed unusual and to really strike me—something personal about it (as I grew up in Colorado, far from the ocean and Alaska, but the mountains in the background reminded me of this), and the incredible gesture of this Humpback Whale brought out his sentient agency, while creating a surrealism in the water and his wondrous body. I wanted to create a feeling of movement in how I micromanaged the aesthetic movements, and love painting water, as it becomes so abstract, my "left brain" can’t synthesize what it "should" look like, and becomes a complicated microcosmic map to project my feelings and inner mind upon, hoping it will break into otherworldly worlds. I grew up with National Geographic’s WORLD magazine for kids, and will always remember listening to a floppy record that came in the magazine one month, of Robert Redford narrating whale songs, and I would listen to its otherworldly voices and be transported, like I did while painting this image that I hope pays homage to their sublime mystery.
This painting was from a show entitled "Good Leaders, Endangered Species, Ships at Sea," an installation of paintings created in the spring before the election that Obama first won, where in the Bush years, I felt we need "Good Leaders" as they were like "Endangered Species" in a world that was like a "ship at sea." Juxtaposed in a deliberate sequence to create a poetic allegory of images, paintings of positive iconic figures from popular and political cultural history were exhibited along with images of animals that are truly endangered in our fragile ecology, next to pictures of vessels striving to overcome seemingly insurmountable storms, symbolizing an optimistic outlook that we can healthily triumph through the chaotic crises of our time. If even conservatives can hopefully understand why it is important to have whales and tigers roaming free on our Earth, hopefully they can agree that we need to take care of ourselves and our planet in order to survive!
Rogue Wave and the Stolt Surf , is a painting from a photo taken by a sailor Karsten Peterson of Denmark who describes himself as Sailor/Photographer/World Traveler/Adventurer on his website called "The Storm: Stolt Surf in the North Pacific, 1977." The site tells the story onboard the Chemical Tanker "Stolt Surf " that was voyaging across the Pacific Ocean from Singapore to Portland, Oregon of U.S. in October, 1977 and encountered a hurricane like storm. While in the midst of the height of the storm, as he tells it as: "The howling wind tears off the top of the waves, and sends it as a horizontal spray across the ocean covering everything in a white mist." Importantly, like the other maritime paintings that are included in the show, the boat survived the storm, as we as a nation have survived the recessions and recent atrocities like 9-11. Personally, as I was painting this at our cabin in Riverside California, I was thinking of my husband and I surviving the perils of our own lives, and achieving the successes of life and career that we have and being thankful for our own strength and endurance. I love the maritime genre of ships at sea, and of course Winslow Homer and especially Turner, and hope to be able to do something new in this great world of art—by working by way of allegory, and a contemporary scene of a chemical tanker that was at peril but arrived home safe, I could infuse into the life of the work all the meditation of what it means to me personally and politically to give it a life of its own.
I think for this series, part of the My American Dream body of work, that we needed “Good Leaders” as they were like an “Endangered Species” in a country that was like a “Ship at Sea.” I felt that even conservatives must love pandas, whales, snow leopards, and the like, and if we can all agree they needed to be saved, then maybe along with it the environment and humanity!
This was at the end of the W. era, and Obama was campaigning and thank goodness he won and thank goodness we have Biden/Harris now!
This is an image of the “real” Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, who was “discovered” by the current Dalai Lama, to be the head of the 900-year-old Karma Kagyu Lineage. After the Dalai Lama passes on, the Karmapa will be the leader of Tibetan Buddhism, perhaps the last, as China has succeeded in suppressing the Tibetan community and there may be no longer a true reincarnation of the Dalai Lama to be found by this Karmapa—in many ways, he is the end of the line of the Tibetan leadership, barring some miracle.
But His Holiness is a kind of a miracle. He was able to escape to his temporary home at Gyuto Monastery in India after being discovered in Tibet, in a trunk of a car—this is an image just after his successful escape, the scar on his cheek he got while hiding in the vehicle. He is also a poet, and a terrific artist, in addition to recording chants with super contemporary Radiohead-like instrumental backdrops that are truly moving and unusual.
I was able to see him live back in NYC when he visited there some years ago with my friend Lisa Kirk, who had gotten me into Buddhism. We used to go to meetings above the McDonald’s in an apartment on 2nd Avenue in the East Village, led by an appointed Dali Lama monk, a gentle man in saffron robes, who worked in a copy shop by day to get by (I will always remember and be grateful for the color xerox packet he made for me, which I also made at least one painting of the Chenrezig Buddha). I really got into it for a while, doing the chants at home, and in my mind walking through the streets of NYC on my way to teach and more. I still do some of the mantras today and believe in them as they work. I did feel after a while, however, that it was someone else’s religion, feeling it was too remote of a culture that while I totally respected, I didn’t feel I could do the depth of time to fully immerse myself in with respect to feel right (my dad made me give back my Webolos’ pin after I missed too many meetings after the Cub Scouts because I couldn’t go to all the meetings). Buddhism though seems a bit like semiotics, which I studied back at Brown, where everything exists but just in the way you perceive it, you become critical of your consciousness. In semiotics, this could be cerebral and about language. But it also points to politics, and gender identity constructs given a capitalistic, phallocentric language, and so on. With Buddhism, there seems a spiritual component that comes along with realizing your objectivity in the universe—that you are one of many, and the interconnectedness of all things comes into play and therefore a mind/body experience of self-awareness, the knowing but also the unknowing of things.
I love Buddhism, it has taught me a lot, and I’m still a fan and a casual, in thoughtful, self-critical ways, a fellow traveler. It got me through much, and I still try to be mindful today in my thoughts and actions, teaching with compassion and empathy literally in my role as professor at USC, but hopefully also in my life and art.
I painted this work for a show called Good Leaders, Endangered Species, Ships at Sea, the idea was that, in the W. waning years right before Obama, we were in desperate need for Good Leaders, who were like an Endangered Species, in a world that was like a Ship at Sea. I felt optimistically that no matter what your political denomination, hopefully you love animals, and especially those that are endangered, like this tiger. Tigers need a lot of space to roam, and that is diminishing drastically, there are only a little over 3,000 living in the wild today, so sad.
Tigers are so sleek and beautiful, and even though in fiction like The Jungle Book, tigers can be portrayed as malevolent, I think they are anything but—they are heroes. Feminine mystique, like my love for all cats, there is something about a tiger that is so seductive and withholding, yet powerful and a force. Here, between blades of grass, she seems to be pensively looking, camouflaged, into what I hope breaks into a kind of surreal pick-it-stick surreality of a dream world, like angels protecting one of the great queens of the planet.
Black Rhino was painted for a show in LA for Kim Light’s Lightbox gallery. It was the beginning if the campaign and debates for Barack Obama vs. John McCain, and the show was entitled Good Leaders, Endangered Species, Ships at Sea (a “chapter” of the über My American Dream meta-narrative). I felt we needed good leaders, because they were like an endangered species, in a world that was a ship at sea…
I had in the show cultural and civil rights leaders like MLK and his family, along with maritime pictures of ships that survived torrid storms, and pictures like this, of endangered species. I thought that no matter what your politics, that even conservatives could agree that we need these precious animals to survive the generations, and therefore care for our planet, global warming, clean air, and water and, with that, caring for all the peoples together on this great earth.
This feels like a mother rhino to me, her great elephantine-like skin is broken and bruised, yet she keeps clamoring on, never giving up the fight, her horn morphing into a foreshortened abstraction, like a magical pachyderm unicorn, stridently exalted for survival, no matter what the cost.
This is an appropriation from a Currier and Ives Print of the same title, of one of the fastest ships of their time that went through a terrible storm and famously survived, to become one of the most famous ships in the world. This originally was in a show called “Good Leaders, Endangered Species, Ships at Sea”, because, on the ebb of the W era, I felt like we needed Good Leaders, because they were like an Endangered Species, in a World that was like a Ship lost at Sea.
Luckily Obama became President, and I felt we were a little less lost at that point, but at the time, the ship seemed like America, strong and powerful, but without a great captain to guide us through the impending doom of the economic recession, and our discursive relationships with the other powers of the world that threatened us. But like this ship that made it, I felt that America would make it, and will continue to be one of the great countries of our moment and of history. Also maritime pictures are I think so popular as they are about freedom, of the boat becoming a proxy for the person who is looking at it, and it takes you on a journey to another place. One of my favorite paintings is the sailboat picture behind the couch at the beginning of the Simpsons, and I feel that it emulates that if you feel like your are stuck in the cul-de-sac suburbia of your Springfield, like the Simpsons, who might look at that painting as a symbol of freedom and escape, that looking at art can also be a talisman for transcendent journeys. After I painted this I was astonished to see that ironically, this image also makes an appearance in a horror movie staring John Cusak and Samuel L. Jackson called 1408 in a hotel room that becomes haunted in a surreal way, and they show the sailboat painting in the room changed to this—like the stretched paintings by Disney animator Mac Davis in the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland! But the original Currier and Ives print I believe was about the hope for America to survive all storms like the power of the boat, and allegorically for me, if the boat could be like a person, that we can survive the trials of our life and come out the stronger for them, and perhaps still win at the end of the day!
It was also interesting to make a painted image from a print, bringing out the colors of what could be a two-dimensional printed image into a three dimensional oil painted plastic world, that also hopefully carries with it the depth and dimension of myself, as I painted fervently through the work to help my own self into a better world of a more exalted plane through the act of painting it.
Inspiration
Currier & Ives: Clipper Ship “Comet” of New York, 1852