Not Only By Words

Thank you so much for posting all your art on here. I have just found you for the first time and your art is simply beautiful to me. I first saw the beautiful pink and blue piece that looks like stained glass and it made me feel so peaceful and serene that I came to your page and looked at everything else you have made as well. I will buy one as soon as I can afford art on top of rent. You have an absolute gift, and I hope I keep seeing your pieces :)

Thank you, Anonymous. That means a lot to me. ❤️

Midnights after getting home

Watercolor and sharpie

Westwood 1985

Leonard Cohen - Mastersong

We have two calamansi trees growing on our balcony. This morning as I write they are covered with fragrant white blossoms. The smell of the citrus perfume takes me back to Southern California and my own springtime.

Age has given me some peace and for that I am grateful. But youth gave me crazy love and for that I sometimes long.

Wine and Bread

Pencil drawing

Calbayog City 2024

ballpoint pen on paper

UCLA 1976

Here's a real old one. I never give out personal demographics just for safety reasons however, I drew this little drawing in 1976 while sitting in the back row half listening to my college chemistry professor. Do the math.

My son drawing in his moleskine. 2024

I have two young kids and both of them love to draw.

That, my friends, gives me quite a tickle.

My son drives his teachers nuts. He never pays attention in class they tell me. He spends all his class time doodling like I'm supposed to get upset about that.

When he comes home his book bag is filled with drawings. He loves showing them to me.

My son's doodles 2024

As a responsible parent I suppose I should be concerned about this but... what can I say.

My daughter, on the other hand, is more of the studious type. She doesn't doodle during class. But at home, she loves to draw and paint.

My daughter drawing in her moleskin. 2024

She usually has a bit of Jackson Pollack style to her art, but this time she added an ice cream cone.

A girl and her moleskine

Life is amazing.

MY life is amazing.

I'm so blessed.

Nature & Humanity

pencil on watercolor paper

Calbayog City 2024

In the Philippines, the real law of the land is the law of nature. With no safty net.

In the Philippines, everywhere women are suckling babies. The streets are filled with children laughing and dancing in play. But there are no old people.

Smiles and machetes.

I exist here as if in a dream. As if in a bubble. Looking out but never touching.

Calbayog City 2024

Cigarettes after sex

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Of Mice and Men

black sharpie on beige paper

Rosemead, 2011

This drawing is actually petty big. About 36 inches in length. I spent some time on it.

Let me tell you a story.

A year or so after I made this drawing, I met a guy who loved my art. He told me he had connections in Hollywood. He was friends with a guy who owned a gallery. He was going to arrange for a showing of my drawings. This, of course, sounded great to me, so I went out and had six of my best pieces professionally framed, including this drawing.

And then... the guy went crazy.

Seriously.

The guy had a complete mental break down.

Babbling crazy kind of breakdown. Dude!

The last I heard about the guy he was being taken to his family's home in New York where he was going to be committed to a mental hospital.

I still have the pieces framed.

Kind of funny.

I made a few nice inverse color prints of this drawing.

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Pencil drawing, Calbayog City, 2024

I kid you not, I think about those guys on the HMS Bounty, a lot.

They had been on Tahiti for six months, living with the Tahitians in what must have been, for them, paradise. And then suddenly Captain Bligh told them they had to pack up and sail back to England.

I would have mutinied too!!

Tahiti

pencil drawing, Calbayog City, 2024

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going home

colored pencil and pen on paper

Los Angeles 2018

"The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everyone rushes around in a great panic as if it is necessary to achieve something beyond themselves."

-- Alan Watts

colored pencil and ballpoint pen

Los Angeles 2018

black sharpie

Hollywood 2018

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Only with spring

Watercolor & coloredpencil

Monrovia 1996

Oh sweet spontaneous earth...

How often have religions taken

thee upon their scraggy knees

squeezing and buffeting thee

that thou mightest conceive

gods.

But true

to the incomparable couch of death

thy rythmic lover

thou answerest them

only with

Spring

e. e. cummings

E. E. Cummings

Johnny

pencil drawing, glendale, 1977

I used to drink entirely too much. Not something I'm particularly proud of but it's just the truth.

I used to go out carousing with my friends on weekend nights terrorizing the Los Angeles metropolis in drunken drugged out all night insanities.

It was fun, actually. Later in life, it stopped being fun. But when we were young, going out at night and being crazy was great fun.

I made the above drawing after one such night with my comrade Johnny. We had left a string of terror down Sunset Blvd. that night, and after we got back to my place, in the wee small hours of the morning, Johnny passed out on my couch. There he sat like an angel, but trust me, behind that gentle face slept a maniac.

And me? I was never too drunk to draw.

A few minutes after I drew the above drawing I felt a bit looser so I drew another one that better captured the spirit.

pencil drawing, glendale, 1977

Oh, for the record, I stopped drinking in 1995.

I had an appointment one morning with a judge who gave me a chilling ultimatum that scared the shit out of me and that I wisely heeded.

Cold turkey.

Thirty years now.

Sometimes I can't believe I survived my youth.

Thank you Judge Sawyer.

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