 I visited Mike and his wife, Carol, and child, Little Mike, on the weekends. This was the edge of his yard.
 Mike Denson made the frames at Henry Rothman's frame shop where I was the fitter in '68. Mike moved to Woodstock, NY, and started a frame shop. The painting “Mike Denson's Place” records a memorable acid trip weekend. I'm about to fall into the brook. The artist Mike Lekakis, a mentor, said I had found my style.
 Ngoot Lee, a traditional Chinese painter, lived in the top floor loft above HR's frame shop. He invited me and my friend Bob Day for dinner. We ate thousand year old bird's nest soup, and I marveled at a scroll of birds he had painted while on vacation in the Hamptons. As an artist I am largely self taught. My maternal aunt gave me an art book of Chinese paintings. I was fascinated by the brushwork and the lack of traditional perspective. I copied this work by Wang Meng from the fourteenth century. What a lesson that was.
 I was against the war and protested in Central Park, 1968, NYC. I remember running from the police. I remember.  A friend, photographer, and I rented the top floor loft in the old Klein's department store at Fourteenth and Broadway, NYC, in 1968. We ate at the Central Cafe on the corner. Take out orders were “seaboard”. The painting “Central Seaboard” is a self portrait. There are two customers, three waiters, and myself walking the walls into the future. |
RSS Feed