Nyse Home, Nyse Piece

This is the first piece I had painted after a six year hiatus. It was commissioned by someone in the Hollywood Hills that worked for the Obama Campaign, for the entry way of his mid-century style house. They wanted a splash of color, and they got this tidal wave of saturation. I actually painted this piece twice, as I was painting on framed panels and the first time the panels were coated with a gloss white paint. Not the best surface for me. So I refinished it and then crushed it with another freestyle.

I have always loved graffiti, but there were several long stretches in my life when I had decided that it had lost its soul, had become institutionalized. So much so that the focus of my final project at UCSD's Masters of Fine Art program was related to the institutionalization of subcultures and how that transformed the art and culture surrounding those pursuits people found so all encompassing. Like Graffiti. And Skateboarding. And Hip Hop.

Anyhow, I felt graffiti had been mainstreamed, what once was sacred, had been exploited. So I turned away in mourning...convinced it was time to move on.

As it turns out, graffiti is not something one can ever escape. Graffiti set in motion a certain cadence of being, a specific way of seeing the world, of adding to its flavor. It in an affliction of letters and colors and individuality. It fosters a different idea of ownership. Graffiti is in the artist, the pieces are merely symptomatic of that underlying need to share that abundance of the visuals that are always exploding in our heads.

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