He once told me he had a chance to play with the Count Basie band but opted to marry my mother and raise a family. Music, writing and painting is in my DNA. My cousin Levi, who is now blind, was an unschooled genius at drawing the human body. His understanding of anatomy was uncanny. All my life I have been trying to emulate his accuracy and brilliance—yet their was no open doors for a poor young black artist in Chicago during the Eisenhower era.
All of my life I have used painting and writing as a means of exorcising demons from my being-in-the-word. The cultural gatekeepers of American art has kept quite a number of talented artist at bay. This nations grave yards are filled with unknown artistic geniuses. Early on in my life I embraced a “do or die” motto. Similar to what Curtis 50 cent Jackson says ” Get rich or die tryin’– I wasn’t concerned about the riches but rather to just be able to exist off of my creativity.
Years ago, I was full of youthful idealism and hell-bent on surviving as an artist by any means necessary. Ultimately, my naivete caused me to become homeless from September 1987 till January 1988. That was one of the most wretched periods in my life–yet I believe suffering somehow makes your art more enduring .More passionate. More spiritual. In 2012, my memoir, about being a homeless artist on Chicago’s wretched streets was published by Wordworth Greenwich Press in CT.