Then, back about last November, I was still out of work, and couldn't find a job. Between my weight, my age, and my last 12 years of work history which was made up of taxi driving and gaps in employment, I was not hearing back from any of the jobs I applied for. Having spent most of my adult life in Southern California around people in the action sports world, my thought was, "OK, I'll create my own job." On that day, I decided to quit thinking of myself as "unemployed," and start thinking of myself as a self-employed artist. Basically, I reframed the situation. A couple days later, I woke up in the morning and thought, "man, I really need to step up my artwork." That night, I sat down at the computer and spent a couple hours looking at all kinds of art online. I was trying to figure out what really got me stoked. I'm a big fan of graffiti art, especially the really intricate murals. But I noticed that I kept going back to stencils. Stencils are a simple, high contrast form of street art made famous by UK urban artist Banksy. As a zine publisher in the 80's, I'd worked a lot with Xerox art, which was also high contrast images.
As I looked through page after page of urban art, I asked myself, "What would I want to put up on my wall?" It's a simple question, but it changed everything. As a kid from the 70's, martial artist and movie star Bruce Lee was a big influence on me as a kid. So I found this image of him, blew it up, and drew it in my own style. I put his quote, "Be like water my friend." under it. I finally made something that I actually wanted to put on my own wall. This drawing started me in a whole new direction, which I've only begun to really explore. Sharpies on paper, 12" X 18".
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