I've beeN Scribbling with Markers as of late. I've been scribbling like pip. Someone said in the dvd movie I made, that art is, "the sweat of the artist, the time, the tears they cried", all of this participates in the spirit of the painting, that which deeply connects us to the human part(s) of ourselves. Maybe the spirit is that which penetrates space, face, time, and causes or brings about a rippling of renewal.

I say this because I deeply believe aRt can chaNge lives, chaNge the worLd, unify and celebrate diversity at the same time, and I believe the spirit of a painting has something to do with this. When I see the scribbling pages of pip, I see masterpieces, I see something that makes me want to cry and smile, I see Beauty in the scribble, in the washable marker stains.

The movie is what it is, it is what people have said.

IT is the sound of trains, the beeping of cabs, the silence of night. In certain frames nothing happens, in others, everything happens, in the words of those who thought they didn't know what to say about art, but then really were overcome by something in them, as if it was ripping out of them, not in a painful way, but in a way of healing and love, art became something for them in those late hours of the night, and maybe will always be something.

I ask myself when will the door paintings be done? If I was Basquiat, art dealers would have come to my studio by now and taken them (Basquiat often accused his dealers of taking unfinished paintings). But I know I am not Basquiat.

Basquiat is a mystery to me and maybe he always will be. I salivate over his neo-expressionist way of painting, as critics and historians have labeled it. But do I label it that? I don't label it anything. IT is his art. Basquiat's art. The genius of Basquiat. I missed his show last year in the Brooklyn Museum because I didn't have the money to travel, or maybe I did at points, but I just didn't go. I missed out on a beautiful thing.

When I think of Basquiat, I think of the speed and flow of him creating, of him slapping the doors and canvas with paint. I wish I could meet the 45 year old Basquiat, but I cannot. What is taking AL's life, has taken his life. The heroin, the "Horse", the underground slang term for it.

I would say I am constantly living in the present, if I am not painting, I feel as if something is not right, or if I am not reading about the history of art and about other artists now, something is replacing the beauty that I most identify with. But then I think, life is art, art is life, linger in the laziness of life and paint and create out of the void, out of the numb noise, the line is uncontrollable because your inner consciousness is out of control, but then there are moments of calm.

I must tell you something, I sometimes feel as if the Institution is slowing me down, or interfering. IT gets in the way of me painting because I have to do other required assignments. But I cannot drop out. I should finish. I just can't wait for the day when I will paint all the time. I appreciate learning in the institution, it is for art, it is for future opportunity.

I was reading about Anne Truitt, a minimalist sculptor/painter, she spoke of her art as lovers and babies. She said she preferred wood over steel, and that is was like having a perfectly eligible man right before her (steel), but just was not loveable. It was the wood she loved. The deterioration of the wood in the outdoors, subject to nature and time. I felt a closeness with her in word. I understood her.

Listen to what she has written:

"I notice that as I live from day to day, observing and feeling what goes on both inside and outside myself, certain aspects of what is happening adhere to me, as if magnetized by a center of psychic gravity.

I have learned to trust this center, to rely on its acuity and to go along with its choices although the center itself remains mysterious to me. I sometimes feel as if I recognize my own experience. It is a feeling akin to that of unexpectedly meeting a friend in a strange place, of being at once startled and satisfied -startled to find outside myself what feels native to me, satisfied to be so met. It is exhilarating."

Look up Ad Reinhardt's "12 Rules for a New Academy" (1953)

It seemed to be a complete negation of myself!

As I was reading about the relationships between Mathematics and Art the studio groaned like Tolkien's forest of trees.

The paintings move, they shift, press against each other. Sometimes it sounds like the snapping of a twig or the crack of bone, a sound I have learned, I have broken 10 bones in my life. I hear the cracking of things, like an egg on rim of bowl, they either are disturbances or reasons to listen, the primordial trying to crack through to you, the hidden holiness of things underneath fingernail or in dusty page of old book grandmother once gave to you as gift and the smells of another place existing still in your everyday place.

Sometimes I just scream out, I let out a noise beyond me, a shouting, a shrill, a sound of frustration penetrating my own soul. Then little child lays his head on your lap and the day becomes the yawning and tired body of that child, the frequent crying of that child, the snorting nose of that child, and then that little child lays down again, soon to be up and about again, hungry, coughing, craving, peeing on the seat, running to the call of nana.

I was reading that the human being when looking at a work of art craves both the emotional expression and the rational expression. I think that the artist is sometimes swamped in the feeling of the art itself, so wet and mucky that the art itself somehow explains itself, analyzes and unravels itself, rewinding and traversing through lines and lines of waiting minds, on the move and ready to water and plant in the soul of looker, which brings up the question, how long should we look at a work of art? If it is a strand of hair hung by a stand of dental floss from moldy ceiling, how long should we look at this?

We know not the artist, the artist is unaware of his/her exhibition, in a trance with their new work, or developing work, the assistants support the artists in this matter by carefully carrying art from studio to gallery. Some might say look until you yawn 10 times. Some might say look until the point where you do not blink. Some might say look until you "get it". I say look until you find your feet wandering to the next piece, eventually you will return, art is revolving, is cyclical, is the 21st century, is the beginning of time.

The brain itself is sacred ground. We call it mind. We call it memory. Somehow the soul and the Spirit and the heart are attachments of this mind. Maybe they are the inner layers and the outer tissues. Whatever it is, I wish I could see the colour of it ... maybe this is something I try to transform or translate into art, art as the image forever, unlike written language, it stays, it is not rewritten or reinterpreted, it just is.

In the Photo you see the development of the triptyche of AL. You have Art as layer, as structure, as construction, as surface, as intense dialogue with yourself and with God. Sometimes when you feel my paintings with your hands, it is as if they will cut you, sometimes the paint is sharp at the tips.

I have been working on a documentary. I approach anybody available and say to them, "Hello, I am doing a documentary about art, asking people if they would share a few words about their own understanding of art, would you like to participate?" So far I think 10 people have participated and it has been beautiful and rich to listen.

I go out after midnight, people all alone in the night, stranger artist approaches them, the world is there own in the words they speak, art becomes something more for them, it becomes a living thing, a living creature, a living idea, and not something closed inside walls and activated by alarm, but something outside of walls, something that extends into their own thoughts and memories in the late hours of the night. Art is ... and the world listens for their response or the blank face that becomes their response because the blank face sometimes tells more than a face with something to say.

My throat is swollen and my nose is running, I feel cold and warm. I am going to an art opening tonight in Newark. The man who owns the gallery invited me, he told me to come and check out the space, meet some artists, my loyal friend Nick is taking me. I have a lot of work to catch up on, I hope I will be able to finish.