I’m a spiritual person, but perhaps not a religious one, as I believe in the transcendent and ineffable, and that we don’t know everything we think we know (although of course I believe in Darwin and Science and the non-subjugation of peoples and our planet due to the dogma of ideological beliefs that can be ruinous to the spirit of the world). But bits and parts of religion and belief systems are appealing to me, along with the Joseph Campbell idea that there are similarities or myths that are ubiquitous throughout the world that become a spiritual-like necessity. To paraphrase, his idea of an artist is that “it is an artist’s job to tell stories for a culture to understand itself in order for the culture to progress,” and hopefully religion does this at its best, and of course this is also what I try to do in my art and teaching. Tibetan Buddhism makes a lot of sense to me—like the semiotics I studied as an undergraduate student at Brown University, Buddhism is a much more ancient ideology that everything exists in the world—but perhaps not in the same manner as we perceive it in though or language.

His Holiness the 17th Gyalwang Karmapa is the leading inheritor of Tibetan Buddhism—after His Holiness the 14th Dali Lama dies, he will carry the torch and help to spread the word and spirit of Buddhism. China has a “fake Karmapa” that they try to trick people into believing in their oppressive regime, but this painting is of the “real” Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje, who they had to sneak out of China to safety in India in a trunk of a car. The Dalai Lama helps to find and recognize his reincarnation, but now with China being what it is, there won’t be anyone to officially acknowledge his reincarnation when he passes, and no one to find the next Karmapa after this one dies, making the 17th Karmapa perhaps the last of this kind of reincarnated Tibetan spiritual leaders.

When they felt it was safe enough for the Karmapa to travel stateside, me and my friend Lisa Kirk (who introduced me to Tibetan Buddhism and to the existence of the Karmapa) went and saw him in Midtown Manhattan. Lou Reed opened for him, singing a perfect rendition of “Perfect Day” and this young leader’s truly insightful, simple, yet elegantly deep thoughts and presence—was an amazingly transformative experience. If you are a believer, he as a reincarnation of the entity depicted in the Thangka painting behind him, and, like when I saw the Dalai Lama at Radio City Music Hall, it was neat to see how much the real-life scene resembled the imagery in the Thangka.

The Karmapa is also a poet, artist, and musician, and while painting this picture I listened to his cool music which sounds like a Tibetan prayer set to the music of Radiohead. I was organizing a complex exhibition of hundreds of artists at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in Manhattan, and this work helped me through it, acting as a calming prayer throughout the process of working though the politics, personalities, and installation of this intense show. It also served as a blessing as the first work in the My Modern Life show—the first exhibition I had that displayed mostly works of paintings derived from my own imagery more than appropriated imagery, a huge revelation for me that gave me full authorship and autonomy over the image—a direct relationship I felt wonderfully while painting the image of this beautiful leader and day.