About the artist

My earliest and most profound influences include political cartoons, college radio, tribal ancestors, L.A. punk rock, rough and cool jazz, wrestlers, the Santa Ana winds, and little earthquakes.

Born in Glendale, CA in 1971, I was raised in Los Angeles, surrounded by journalists and the Angeles National Forest where (I imagine) mudslides collect power. My grandfather, Chief Terry Saul, a formidable Choctaw painter and illustrator passed along his name and his paintbrushes to me.

Most of my work is an effort to reconcile tangible experience and nostalgia. I examine my own impossible childhood fantasies, fleeting hopes, the challenges of normality. Being a person of mixed-race descent, juxtapositions and hybridization have grown increasingly important to me. I also address humor, personal moments in public, and other obsessions—with communion, politics, and play.

I cannibalize the imagery that surrounds me—redrawing from photographs, making collages from found scraps, piecing together meaning. I ponder how I relate to my child, for instance, and the children of my friends, spinning fragile threads that are woven and broken between us as we grow. I ask questions such as: How have we mythologized the past? What defines the original in a world of reproductions? What is memory? How is it changed with each remembrance?

But, despite considering myself to be a narrative and figurative artist, none of my questions are as important as how a brush stroke has its own energy, or what colors to use. I believe, in the end, formal concerns supersede content, or rather; they (all on their own) create a world of meaningfulness.

Favorite artists include Philip Guston, James Ensor, Luc Tuymans, Marlene Dumas, Edward Hopper, Marsden Hartley, Arthur Dove, Pierre Bonnard, Mary Cassatt, Lucien Freud, Stanley Spencer, Louise Bourgeois, Paul Klee, and artists of the Pacific Northwest whose works have been disassociated from their names. I lived and worked with Martin McMurray, who has also had a profound effect on my life and work.

About the Bicycling Series

The bicycling series touches on familial influences, in particular the art of my grandfather, Chief Terry Saul, a Choctaw painter, illustrator, and peyotist, albeit in a free-form and unregimented fashion. For me these pieces are about two impossible childhood fantasies, both dreams of a kind of manhood that didn't yet seem off limits: being a fancy dancer on the Pow Wow circuit, and racing in the Tour de France. On a broader level, the series attempts to challenge conceptions of normality by juxtaposing two alien traditions that come together and even fuse at unexpected points of contact: the colorful regalia of the performers, stoicism and feats of athleticism leading to transcendence, ritual movement within the context of the natural landscape, the individual's realization of a "dream" that becomes truth by way of communal performance.

The characters' riding gear and dress don't belong to any one tradition or tribe in particular, or to one time period or sport (some of the references are to early Tour de France equipment). Fantasies are not altered by growing pains, distractions, accidents, gender roles, or historical truth, but rather follow a shaman's spirit. Hopefully and not least, these pieces also capture an aspect of tribal culture that is too often ignored in westernized conceptions of the "Indian": our rich and even phantasmagorical senses of humor. This work is experimental in nature, and will continue to grow in meaning as time passes.

Thank you to David Sepanik for help with editing and writing this statement, and for inspiration and support during the painting of the bicycle series.

About the Obama Chocolate Series

On inauguration day, 2009, Bay Area chocolatiers celebrated Barack Obama’s election as the first black U.S. president (with roots spanning multiple continents) by painting him as what appeared to be a shining blue chocolate Vishnu. The hope of that day—captured in this series—was apparent, but as post-election realities take hold many Obama supporters are aware that his hopefulness, and ours, may be as fleeting as the sweet taste of candy on a holiday. Alternatively, for those who still hold fast to the faith inspired by our first black president, what does the merging of Obama and chocolate mean? Is it addressing a bit of Oaklandish humor about black identity and the evolution of nomenclatures that include chocolate? Are there unstated messages here about black identity?

In these paintings, Obama’s flattened and simplified chocolatized visage is about to be swallowed and digested by the mouth of a young child, one eager to become Obama-like, to like Obama, and to simply savor the flavor of celebration, even if it melts away too fast. This personal moment in a public celebration is ripe with messages about art and politics. We often cannibalize the imagery that surrounds us as artists—redrawing photographs (often without explicit permission), making collages from found scraps, piecing together meaning, recycling. Inherent recyclers, we appropriate in order to glean a sense of participation in our media-saturated world. Just as politicians are eager to define themselves, we as artists are hungry to contest and question well-known tales and personas, using terms, colors, narratives, and frames found throughout society—even something as simple and commonplace as chocolate.

At the heart of these paintings is the question: What is the relationship between the politician and the voter? How can Obama both be as real and immediate as the taste of chocolate but also as distant and extraordinary as the President of the United States? And how is my use of each related to the blind consumption that most artists protest? This series was made from a photo of a friend’s child taken during a heightened moment in history: The original photo was snapped with wit and shrewdness, and then, playing the role of the bittersweet painter, I both canonized and cartoonized the innocent image, using my artistic creations and those of my friend. I’ve projected my own obsessions—with communion, politics, consumerism, and play—onto the closely cropped countenance.

Another facet I’d like to address in this quadruplet is how we relate to the images of our children. I’ve attempted to engage a photograph taken by a friend of a child I know well. How are my four paintings—each slightly altered reproductions of the photo—related to the original photograph? How have we mythologized the original in a world of reproductions? And where is the boundary between who eats and what is swallowed, between who we were as children and who we become as parents? In a sense we’re all hybrids: of the image and the original, of the child and the adult, of the public and the private, of parents with different racial and cultural origins and upbringings, of our nature and our nurture, and yet we try to live each day with authenticity, as clear and direct as the taste of chocolate.

Thank you to Scott Esposito, Hisae Matsuda, Mugi Takei, Emmy Scharlatte, and Josh Michels for help with editing and writing this statement, and for inspiration and support during the painting of the most recent series. Thank you Emmy for your photos.

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