JEAN MICHEL

8.5″ x 11″ Mixed Media on Notebook Paper

Last month, last weeks, last days, last call for inspiration. Last time I watched your bio I found more direction. Your directions have lasted longer than your life, but your life will last longer than time. This time your inspiration has brought me to make a portrait of you… in your dedication. Feeling your vibrations through ink and paint. Feeling your inspiration through days and time… I wait… for more.

AMBUSHED

10″ x 10″ Mixed Media on Paper

See them fighting for power. But they know not the hour. So they bribing with their guns, spare-parts and money. Trying to belittle our integrity now. They say what we know is just what they teach us. And we’re so ignorant ’cause every time they can reach us. Through political strategy. They keep us hungry. And when you gonna get some food, your brother got to be your enemy.
Well, what we know Is not what they tell us. We’re not ignorant, I mean it and they just cannot touch us. Through the powers of the Most-High, we keep on surfacin’. Thru the powers of the Most-High, we keep on survivin’.
Yeah, this ambush in the night, planned by society. Ambush in the night. They tryin’ to conquer me. Ambush in the night. Anything money can bring. Ambush in the night, planned by society… Ambush In the Night – Bob Marley & The Wailers

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

11″ x 15″  Mixed Media on Watercolor Paper

Survival of the fittest, only the strong survive. Where will you run to to save your life? They’re coming after you there’s no where to hide. Do what you gotta do just to stay alive. Fly like a butterfly don’t get stung by the bees. Pack your power punches like Muhammad Ali. The world only dishes out as much as you can take. Gather up your strength, don’t bend don’t break. Predator vs. prey in the middle of the night. You gonna run for your life or will you stand up and fight?

ON MY LIPS

26″ x 37″ Mixed Media on Paper

“I want to be a lost poem in a stranger’s coat pocket, that conveys the importance of you. To assure you of my desire, to assure you of dreams. I want all the possibilities of you in writing. I want to give you your reflection, I want your eyes on me, I want to travel to the lightness with you and stay there, and I want everything before you to follow us like a trail behind me. I want never to say goodbye to you, even on the street corner or the phone. I want, I want so much… I’m breathless. I want to put my power into a poem to burn a hole in your pocket so I can sew it. I want my words to scream through you. I want the poem not to mean that much. And I want to contradict myself by accident, and for you to know what I mean. I want you to be distant and for me to feel you close, I want endless days when it’s day and nighttime never to end when it’s night. I want all the seasons in one day. I want the sun to set before us and come up in front of us. I want water up to our waists and to be drenched by the rain, up to our ankles with holes in our shoes. I want to think your thoughts because they’re mine. I want only what’s urgent with you. I want to get in the way of the barriers and I want you to be a tough guy when you’re supposed to, like you do already. And I want you to be tender, like you do already. And I want us to have met for a reason and I want that reason to be important. And I want it to be bigger than us, I want it to take over us. I want to forget. I want to remember us. And when you say you love me I don’t want to think you really mean New York City, and all the fun we have in it. And I want your smile always, and your grimaces too. I want your scar on my lips, and I want your disappointments in my heart. I want your strength in my soul and I want your soul in my eyes. I want to believe everything you say, and I do. And I want you to tell me what’s best when I don’t know. And when you’re lost I want to find you. And when you’re weary I want to give you steeples and cathedral thoughts and coliseum dreams. I want to drag you from the darkness and kneel with you exhausted with the blinding light blaring on us… and…”

~ Chelsey Walls

IN THE BEGINNING

18″ x 24″ Mixed Media on Paper

What was it like before highways?  Before drive through food lines?  Before money?  How did we go from living off the land to living on the couch?  Where are all of our gardens?  Our outdoor fun?  Why are some people’s phones more important than their personalities?  Where are we headed?  Is it the right direction?  What was the world like in the beginning?  What were we before all of this?

DO YOU SEE IT

18″ x 24″ Mixed Media on Paper

There’s really nothing in this painting to find, is there?  Unless you look hard enough for it.  Some people will see it and others won’t.  Like those magic eye pictures.  Can you see it?  If you can guess what it is… you win.  There’s nothing I swear.  Well maybe…

RED SCHOOL

18″ x 24″ Mixed Media on Paper

I want to live in the sea.  I want to be a small fish and travel the world with my family and pack of good friends.  There’d be no jobs or house/yard work and we’d eat our meals along the journeys.  We’d get to see so many cool places and meet other schools from around the world.  They would tell us where they’ve been and what they’ve seen.  I want to be free in the ocean drifting around with nothing to worry about.

STOP ‘n’ SMELL

18″ x 24″ Mixed Media on Paper

Sometime you’ve got to.  But I like the smell of fresh cut grass more.  Smell the roses.  It doesn’t do it for me.  Just do it.  Nothing.  Nothing?  Yeah, I still think the grass is better.  Whatevs!  It’s nothing personal and it’s just a saying anyways?  What?  Yeah, really…

CLEAN UP

10″ x 10″ Mixed Media on Paper

This is one of my clean up pieces.  I use the paper to clean off the extra paint on the tools used to create the larger pieces.  These works are not ever really planned and just kind of happen as I go along.

HANDYMAN

10″ x 10″ Mixed Media on Paper

This is my hand.  This is my drawing.  This hand drew this man.  I dipped this hand down into the paint and pressed it against the paper.  After it was dry I drew this man over it.  The letter “y” means “and” in Spanish.  Hence the name Handyman (hand y man).  Hand and man.  I guess I could have went with Manoyhombre as well.

NEVER KNOWN BUT MISSED

8.5″ x 11″ Mixed Media on Water Color Paper

I had just finished watching Jean-Michel Basquiat The Radiant Child by Tamara Davis and I had to make something as soon as it was over.  I made a pair of tribute sneakers in Baquiat’s honor in my first week and now had to try my hand at his style.  Most people hate it.  They look at it and scream that it is not art.  But what is art?  Personally I love his work and am a huge fan of his.  Maybe my next attempt will be in his style, but on a much larger scale like the way he worked.  I even let my 2 year old niece (Grace) throw down some lines on this one.