This was the first painting I created when my husband and I moved to our new apartment at the corner of 25th and 10th in Chelsea, down the street from my gallery, in the heart of the NYC art world. This is from a film still from the famous movie Giant where James Dean portrays Jett Rink, the never-do-well rough ranch hand of Rock Hudson’s cattle ranch, who discovers oil on the property left to him by Rock’s sister, a tough broad and probably lesbian, unmarried who had a shine for the kid who also was different like herself. Jett wanted to take over the world, perhaps in the wrong ways, but I identify with his rebel spirit, and wanted to do the same with my art. He’s holding a cigarette in his hand, one that I had smoked—not being a pervasive smoker, I was always giving it up, and cut my last one in half to be able to have him have the appearance of holding it.

Of course, “Giant” is a double entendre—Dean supposedly packed a big one. He was gay, or at least “Hollywood bisexual,” and was sugar-daddied by men into the Hollywood system, seeking out for pleasure and power the comfort of other closeted (and sometimes not) queers who helped him on his way to early fame and fortune, only to have his candle burned out by Donald Turnupseed, the hapless hayseed who didn’t see Dean’s Porsche coming down the highway, low to the ground and shining in the hallucination of the light on the desert California highway, bringing him to his early end. Dean was a rebel with a cause, he wanted to be a great actor who changed culture, an artist like Picasso or Michelangelo or even Judy Garland or Brando—channeling his spirit, a quintessential method actor, into his work to bring it life. He did change culture, he performed literally his goals. As a sensitive queer-like persona in all his roles, he was othered, on TV he played series of juvenile delinquents but in the movies, all three of them, he was the misunderstood kid who just wants to fit in and make things right, who is able to see the problems of the world and how mankind works, and wants to fix it and make a better place for all, however wrongheaded he might go about to accomplish this. He was the inspiration for rock ‘n’ roll—Elvis revered him and wanted to be like him, ushering him into film, but also singing his emotive music that made the characters in his songs become alive. I think the hippie generation and Woodstock may never have happened if it weren’t for Dean—certainly the bohemian poets of a generation before loved him as much as they may have loved the poet Arthur Rimbaud. For me growing up, he was not just a poster on my wall, but a vision I aspired to watching him on television, super sexy and cool, a strange morphing creature that was like Bowie (who was also influenced by him), like Ziggy Stardust an avatar from outer space come to our planet to be a star and to save us from ourselves.

This was from a show called Rebel Angels at the End of the World, after my husband’s best friend Alicia had died from AIDS-related causes. She too was a rebel and thinking of these angels who were also like saints, I created these images, worried about where we were going, but loving where, on the good side, these great icons brought us to progress as a nation and people.