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And this is why you painted the homeless?

Yeah. You see, I grew up watching the urban scene, so it was always interesting to see people who weren’t really wealthy. When I came over to America, I had no idea what it’d be like here -- there was no planning involved. It was like, “Oh I wanna go check it out”, and then here I was in San Francisco. I couldn’t speak English well nor did I have any idea of what was going on.

I was living downtown where a lot of homeless people were around. So I started talking to them and they were friendly towards me. Naturally, I got closer to them and saw them everyday. I painted them simply because they were the people around me.

Really?

Yeah. People often assume I have something to say about homelessness but in fact, I don’t. Yes, they were homeless, but at the same time they were my friends and my neighbours. They were just people I painted who happened to be homeless.

Well, there go five questions. [Laughs.]

[Laughing.] Sorry.

It seems that unlike many male artists, you draw more men than women. Why is that?

I do both, I do both -- male and female, but yeah, maybe more of the former.

For example, in San Francisco Urban Camper there were more men.

Yeah, urban camper, that’s why. The homeless? Not many women. [Laughs.] Once in a while I’ll see a woman around, but not as often as I see men. Also, a lot of my paintings are portraits of people on the street and collages from street-found objects. These kinds of paintings are a little messier and not too fancy, so they give a more masculine sense in my opinion.

I also noticed that religion is a recurring theme in your titles God Made Dirt, And Dirt Don't Hurt and San Francisco Portraits of Jesus. What does religion mean to you?

I read the Bible, but I’m not a Christian. I have no religion. What Portraits of Jesus means is that Jesus is human like all of us, like a representation of human beings. Regardless of whether we’re homeless or wealthy or me or whoever, we could all be Jesus. That’s why I chose the words Portraits of Jesus to mean portraits of human beings. As for God Made Dirt, And Dirt Don’t Hurt, it doesn’t really have anything to do with religion. God made dirt. And dirt don’t hurt. [Laughs.]

You’ve said you’re most proud of San Francisco Urban Camper. Why is that?

It’s what I’ve been doing for the last thirteen years in San Francisco. I guess you get attached to something you’ve been constantly doing for such a long period of time. It’s also a documentary on what I’ve seen and my thoughts on the people who camp on the streets around my home. That’s why I’m proud of it.

13 years is a really long time to spend dedicated to one subject.

Yeah, the last 13 years… maybe more than that? As soon as I came here, I started painting, drawing, and taking photos of them. I’ve been doing that for a long time now and I still am, but not as much as I used to. My art has changed ever since I started DJing. I’m going a whole other direction with my paintings now but I still do paintings of the homeless occasionally.

A whole other direction? Does this have something to do with the line “Deejaying Saved My Life” in God Made Dirt, And Dirt Don’t Hurt?

DJing made me start to think about expressing myself and how to actually do that. I’d been painting and drawing classical and realistic paintings for a long time, but I never felt as though I’d expressed myself. It always felt like I had to paint something beautiful or somehow render perfection. After I started to hang around street musicians and artists, I found that I was expressing myself. DJing is about making music and then editing it to make a new and different sound, and that’s made me think, “What if I do my art this way?” My art has totally changed since I approached DJing. That’s why I included that line -- DJing saved my art, my life, my art life.

 

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