The first time I saw your work, I was walking down Valencia street, and I was thunderstruck by one of your paintings. I had to come in off the street to stare at it. It was the portrait of the sexy nude woman with the "evil brain" as I called it, at first. I couldn't handle the complexity of what you were revealing. The many layers of a woman's desires, fears, anger and lust. Can I admit to feeling what I am feeling when I am, looking at the painting? Not in public! In order to own that passion, I would have to externalize it, place my fantasies on someone else, as if they could be real. Otherwise I would feel deep embarrassment that I was capable of lust and fear, if others were to see what turns me on, like an advertisment of my unmet desires.

Art with such a powerful message doesn't go down easy. For you to reveal that, you have to be a real person, not just the absent artist. You need to attach your image to your art, stamp yourself on it the same way Warhol or Basquiat attached their images (as honestly as they could manage) to their work, sort of accompanied their art even if they weren't present when the buyer took the painting home. When I look at a Basquiat painting, in the back of my mind I am also seeing HIM, his face, his story, his sexuality, politics. It's all there together. No mystery about the source of the art. I know his history, and that enriches the art for me, I would want to own one of his paintings because of the complex story and fascinating character behind the art. This is the way your art should be marketed, with you as the fascinating creator. A documentary about you would be fascinating.

You are challenging people's precepts, their hypocrisy, and, in the case of men, even their manhood. Your honesty makes dishonest people run for cover. It's only a matter of time before they will be revealed, they fear. When your art stands alone, it frightens most people, or excites them in a way they feel guilty about.

My first reaction was: who created this art? When I found out it was a women, it intrigued me. when I saw your picture later, it doubled my pleasure and completed the cycle of sexual excitement I felt (and still do).

Now that I know more about you, I see you as a quixotic, heroic explorer into the subconscious, waiting to be uncaged and to free the rest of us from our shame and denial. The art is the record of you, and therefore YOU must come along with the art, as part of it, the same way you can't disconnect a singer from his hit song. Part of the emotional impact of the art is that it comes from YOU, your cauldron of contradictions and seductions.

Professionally, you have to ask yourself what kind of person wants to put their darkest secret up on their wall for all to see. This is the person who wants to buy your work but is too ashamed to do it. To buy a picture of their deepest fear, or desire, or both, would be an act of courage and a way to reveal yourself.

My father used to say "know your market", and talk to them directly. You can ignore the galleries that are scared of your stuff, their reaction is understandable. They are selling pictures that are supposed to fade away behind the beige sofa into oblivion, and match the wall color. They select art to help buyers disguise the anguish they feel, the longing, the emptiness, not to reveal it and display it.

You are a bomb, waiting to explode. But instead of killing people, your bomb will liberate them. Your art will free them from their shame, their guilt, their fear of discovery. You have to find the people who want to use your art for personal liberation, or to shock people so that they stop and stare. Forget the decorators looking for beige. You shock people in San Francisco! Where people come from all over the world to get laid! People flock here for sexual freedom, which is what you offer them in an instant of recognition. People looking at your art either stand transfixed or run away as fast as they can. You will have no market in between, unless you change your style (Imagine your Aquarius self doing that? HA!).

So keep doing what you need to do and make the world suit itself to you, whatever the cost. They will have to accept you, they have no choice. Keep doing it.

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