"Sexual Immorality" Print

My earliest memory is drawing a spider for my old grandma Maud. And to this day, my art is kind of dark in subject matter. I've been doing art since 2000, from about the time I was first diagnosed with schizophrenia. I spent five years in a mental hospital. No fun. I was lucky to be able to crayon in a kid's coloring book. Although I've been in complete remission for over twenty years, still, my experience with mental illness influences my art, both directly and indirectly. For instance, with my psychosis I believed I was the second coming of Christ, that is, God. And sure enough, many of my paintings have Jesus as a subject or religion. Of course, much art through the ages is religious, from Neolithic cave paintings, to the cathedral and church art of the Middle Ages, and all the way to Van Gogh and Picasso. It was very deep when I was Jesus; delusions are powerful. I have no formal education in art; I am self taught and am glad about that because It allows my own style to take center stage, without rules of painting stifling me. Because I have no formal training in art and had a psychosis, my paintings fall under the category of "outsider art". It's the style of art done by kids, the insane and those without a formal education in art. I love kids' art! I've always been creative. I've been a magician/escape artist, rock musician and even played Jesus in my middle school production of the musical, Godspel. As a teen, I studied sleight of hand magic in NYC with Slydini, a world renowned magician. When I was 19 I escaped from a straitjacket, hanging upside down from the famous Brooke Shields/Calvin Klein billboard in Times Square, which created quite a stir on the TV national news. During my 20s, I was a street performer in NYC, performing a straitjacket and chains escape. I also have two books self published, a poetry one, Poems and Parables from the Sunny Day Asylum, and a collection of short fiction, Somewhere Over the Rainbow. My writing is funny and highly ironic. But of all my creative pursuits, I find art the most expressive and fulfilling.