Jean-Michel Basquiat

16″ x 36″ Mixed media on canvas

One of my series of artists/musicians who died tragically before their time, and whose life somehow affected my own. Jean-Michel Basquiat is what I consider one of the forefathers of the current “Street Art” scene/movement. As a genre, his work tends to be categorized as “neo-expressionism” along side of Julian Schnabel and others. What’s tragic for ME, in addition to the obvious…heroin overdose at age 27, was that when I was in college he, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, were names I heard thrown around CONSTANTLY. They were local artists, whatever. It wasn’t history then, it was just life. It was current events, most of which I was too wasted to really care about at all. By the time I was old enough and sober enough to appreciate these people for their influence on art, culture and history, they were all dead.

Basquiat was an amazing artist, who was just getting started. His work is SO important in NYC right now, if an old building is found to have a Basquiat-painted wall on it, it can’t be destroyed. That wall has to be preserved.

As it should be.