March 2010

On March 22nd I turned 40 and decided to spend the day with Messenger Scorpion at the CA Poppy Reserve.






I live & work in Downtown Los Angeles, a little place I like to call America's Calcutta.













On March 4th 2010 tens of thousands took to the streets all over California to protest the firing of 23,000 public school teachers.







Gregory Brisson
The Modern Primitive
A departure from tradition

I respect the efforts that go into educating an artist and the student teacher relationship but I have never considered these factors to be what makes the artist. If I see a work of quality the last question on my mind is “I wonder where they went to school?” I am always wondering about the creator’s life. What shaped them to? What drives them to create?
When encountering the work of Gregory Brisson you would find it hard to be impressed by it’s sophistication and refined technique mainly because those qualities are pretty much absent. What does impress is the beautiful rawness of technique, simplicity of his lines, the bold colors, and the varied subject matter ranging from intimate portraits of former male lovers to whimsical creatures that seem out of a children’s book.

What was it that shaped Greg, a man on the cusp of his 70th year, to create such seemingly light-hearted and almost child-like work?

Born in Minnesota in 1941 Greg’s life was set to be one of intense struggle. At the age of 4 his mother was institutionalized with severe mental illness and was raised by an aunt who would take him to visit his mother in a place more like a miserable dungeon than a place of compassionate care (this was at the dawn of psychiatric medicine).
Throughout his childhood he was always drawing and intensely creative which he developed more in high school. Greg attended St. Cloud University and graduated in 1964 with a bachelor in science and art education. During this time he began suffering discrimination for being homosexual, became ostracized from his family (his only support at the time) and found himself starving on the streets during a Minnesota winter. An art history teacher at the university of Minnesota was made aware of his situation and took him under his wing, gave him a place to live, and nurtured Greg’s artist soul.
Both of them realized that Minnesota in 1969 probably wasn’t the best place for a young gay artist to be himself so with $50 in his pocket Greg boarded a bus for San Francisco. San Francisco at that time was an exciting place full of hippies, free love, and an openly gay community but little work. Greg found his way to the Tenderloin neighborhood and worked odd jobs to support him while he painted. Life presented another series of difficult circumstances and once again Greg found himself living on the streets. After a rough ride being homeless in the city Greg was awarded what was then termed a “third world” full scholarship to the San Francisco Art Institute where he studied under Mary Johnson and Hatowski.
After graduating Greg met a former military man turned nurse who was to become his life partner of 37 years. Finding San Francisco to be getting smaller and smaller feeling they packed up and moved to Los Angeles and Greg found a place where he could truly be himself and the freedom of expression he was looking for. In the mid-80’s he befriended fellow artist Susan Bolles whom he began sharing a studio with in downtown LA where he still paints today.

As I state at the beginning of this, I respect the artist’s education but am most interested in their story, which I consider the real education. Although Gregory has lived a life that would have crushed many he still paints everyday with the enthusiasm of a neophyte untouched by life’s hardships. The seemingly naïve carefree-ness of his of his unique style contradicting the story of the man.