Origin Of A Shaman: Texas Chops

I estimate that I had already set up at nearly 50 comic book conventions in several states before I got to Texas in 1980. I traveled to shows in Illinois, Indianapolis, Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, Pennslyvania, New York city, Georgia, Florida, Alabama and New Orleans by the age of 22. Those days were sweet; to be young and on top of my game in days when fortunes in comic art were to be had for the diging. With youth friends are everywhere to be had, and in those pre technology days a network of comic book friends and collectors paved the way to national travel, and all of life's needs were to be had in exchange for comic books.

I learned non attachment by buying and selling so many kinds of comic books that all comic books hang in a chronological framework in my mind. Publishers, titles, issues, characters, origins and first appearences, artists, writers, editors, pencilers, inkers, letterers, colorists, their bios and stats, collectors, buyers, their girlfriends, suckers, patsys, dealers, promoters, distributors (many in the day!), hotel venues, shopping malls, convention centers, rec halls, dusty attics, flea markets, estate sales, crowded hotel rooms and lonely hours on endless highways. These were my youth and the constitution of a transcendant knowledge of a vast but finite field of comic books and strips.

More important this is only a fraction of the knowledge I soak up relentlessly on all subjects of my personal interest; basically all aspects of human existance, artistic expression and most of all: seeing multiple perspectives. It is accidental that I still have the badges below which I reckon represent about 60% of the shows I attended and set up at in Texas between 1980-1990.
                                      

After 1990 I was pretty manic and running with a crowd of artists and musicians. By this time I could really only communicate with the bohemians and street people willing to attempt  to grasp the complex rambling my mind was dealing with. A thought required three paragraphs of text to express, and this just doesn't fly in polite society. My only hope was to shut up and paint. below is a few of the paintings I created in the next few years, I think mainly to convince my self I am really an artist.