Does every picture tell a story? No, some paintings merely get stoned and drool. I can’t remember all the tales, but I’m sure I must have smoked some pot during the creative process, and I probably had a lot of fun. You can put on a really good buzz between the start and the finish, it takes almost a week to make a maze, it takes two coats of paint to get them that bright. I draw the entire path in pencil and begin the coloration process on the first day of construction, so that is the date I use to identify the maze. If that is your birthday, could the painting represent your path in life?
summer 1970
This is my only maze with the starting point in the center, it’s supposed to be the nose. The eyes are supposed to spell “fuck”, as if to depict a frizzy-haired furry freak brother being very stoned. When I was eighteen, my friends came home from college with marijuana. Sometime later that summer I became acquainted with blacklight and fluorescent paint. When I was bored in high school study hall I would draw mazes on regular notebook paper and I had a few of them at home for my youngest sister to solve. I wondered what they would look like if I put the fluorescent paint on them. The immediate reaction of my friends was, “far out man, do some big ones”. I made three that year but only “summer 1970” is still around. You can do some really good stuff when you are eighteen, don’t let people tell you can’t.
12/24/94
It was twenty-four years before I painted again. A girlfriend and I were at a street festival and she was admiring the work of another artist, just jerking my chain and trying to make me jealous, and I told her, “I can paint better than that”. I loved her boots, so I traced them on a posterboard, designed the maze, and painted it. It was a big hit around the house and the positive sexual reinforcement was enough to encourage my art career.