Transformative Worlds of Color

There was no graffiti, there was no hip-hop culture, but I knew I could draw, so I started doing stuff on walls.

“Graffiti” comes from the Latin word “graphīre” which means “to scratch.” You can go to see where Alexander the Great conquered and all the way through Europe down to North Africa, everywhere he went he put his name. Tagging is not a new thing.

Robert Alton Harris was going to be the first guy killed in the gas chamber in 25 years in San Quentin. And for his last super he wanted Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pepsi. So my friend did a sketch and he painted in acrylic, I painted in spray paint…and then we put it up in downtown San Francisco. So is this graffiti? ‘Cuz here’s this really iconographic painting still life image. Or is it graffiti ‘cuz my friend is working in acrylics? Or is it graffiti ‘cuz we’re starting to show our stuff in galleries…and here it is outside?

I came at what they called the Golden Era of graffiti in Oakland. In Fruitvale were these tracks that were about 2 miles long that people from all over the world would come paint at. Here is 1988,this is a picture of me, it has this text on it that says, “The world is my canvas, the canvas is my message, the message is my theory, the theory is my life.” That was me trying to be deep when I was 19.

I met this guy who was a lot like me…and he’s like, “You know what, man, you do a lot of stuff outside, I want to do stuff outside.” And I said, “You know what? For me, because I’m starting to use all these colors, it’s getting so technical I can’t do it in the middle of the night. I’m thinking about doing these panels and then mounting them outside.”