PRIMER, PART II

The first page of the book.

This one is called Whistler.  The original drawing is of Alex Abramov.  He commissioned me to do eight drawings of him using photographs from his series of books about himself that I really love called Uncovered. (Get them if you can!). 

Instagram ad for our collaboration.

I scoured the books and read his writing and I think he’s a good guy.  And an incredibly beautiful  man. 

The reference photo I used to draw from.

I don’t really know Alex well.  We haven’t hung out.  But I’ve talked with him on the phone.  We’ve talked via email or instagram messenger. He is very direct and clear and easy to deal with.  An Aries.  Just like my husband.  What you see is what you get and there is not a lot of mystery.  That’s why I agreed to do what I never ever do -  a commission. 

I hate mystery. I think mystery is the cheap alternative to decency and goodness.  It sucks you in but for what? What do you get in the end?  Usually a blandness. Once the mystery is gone in most tv show mysteries all you got left is a pile of money and a dead body and jail.  And crying.  And who wants that? Yuck. 

So I am much more into goodness and decency and warmth and affection and real depth won from experience.

I don’t know Alex well.  But I know this drawing and I know “expression” and this is what I have chosen for the opening page because what is it?  Simple, warm, beautiful. 

I gotta tell you I have no problem calling my own work beautiful because I am working very hard to achieve my taste level.  And If I do, then I am definitely going to think it’s beautiful. It took me ages of hard work to be able to create anything that I really believed was beautiful. I want to create to the best of my ability and that means me getting my work to a level I think is wonderful.  

A drawing of Alex that I really like.

And I know this sounds harsh, but I don’t have much patience for anyone who hates their work and is never satisfied with it.  Then what are you showing me, your bad work?  I don’t want to see what you think is crap.  And if your work is good and you call it bad, what are you saying to those of us who struggled to do good work in the first place?   You make us feel horrible if we are in the process of learning to become good at what we do. . If you can create good work, don’t denigrate it in front of people who do their best and can’t get there yet. It’s disheartening for the rest of us. Truth is truth and we need it more now than ever on every front.  Especially from artists and people who are potentially role models.  Just be real.

I think all the work in my book is incredibly good and that is partly because I see all the work that went into it.  And my work is not in competition with any other artist’s work.  It might be in competition with other artists’ work in terms of money spending, but that is it.  And if we gay male artists are worried about our income from out work… then we are very lucky! So very few of us can actually live off what we create. We are so undervalued.

Almost all my work is available for free anyway.  I don’t watermark anything and I think you can just download the photos of anything you like from my website.  Books cost something and the merchandise costs something, but I don’t make them and I only get a small cut.  I’d still love if you bought them, but if you don’t have the money to support artists, then don’t, but still cover your walls with art so you are happier and more motivated to do well in this world. My original work is all I really get anything from and I hate selling it.  I won’t sell it myself and I get a lot of requests.  I have a couple guys I trust in Canada to sell my original work but because of the insanity of the current USA administration, shipping outside the USA is nuts.  If you live in Canada you have the best chance at getting an original drawing.  If you come to Palm Springs, you can get in touch with me and maybe we can meet in person and you can buy something directly, but I have a phobia of things getting lost or destroyed in the mail so I an not usually willing to send anything.  So I mean it when I say my work is not in competition with anyone else’s.  I hope you love 400 artists as much as you love me.  And I hope you let them know.  And I hope you buy work from them when you can. We need the encouragement now more than ever. 

Also, I only show work now that I think is incredibly good.  And this one - it’s the only piece in the book that is this simple.  It’s just my drawing of Alex a little bit digitally enhanced.  It has a sheen to it that isn’t present in the original.  It’s like a daguerreotype and it’s a way into the story of the whole book.  And what is that way in?

Like I said, it's expression.  What do you see?  I see contemplation, wistfulness, maybe even regret?  Maybe melancholy?  But all that from a warm, decent guy.  Someone worthy of love just being himself. My husband thinks it’s regret, like he broke up with someone and he is thinking about that as perhaps a mistake or just experiencing that loss and it’s unavoidable pain.  I want that you feel the weight of his mood, there’s energy here that is palpable. I don’t want you to avoid it or be alarmed by it.  I want you to lean in.  That is what I intend.  I want you to recognize that he is going through something, that humanness of experiencing complex emotion.  He’s no flat advertisement for what it is to be a man.  He’s not selling you anything.  He is in the moment and you can feel his moment. Recognize him in yourself and don’t shy away.

The page as it appears in the book.

I used to see images of men this beautiful and get jealous.  And I never felt I could ever be this amazing person to people.  I complained about that to my ex, Elliott, and he snapped at me.  He said, “you walking around thinking yourself ugly is an insult to a lot of people out there who are really not attractive.  There are people out there who are scarred or just very homely and we need them to be out there walking around with their heads held high so they can truly be seen and your attitude is exactly what perpetuates this myth of beauty and what that even means.”  “You are good looking”, he said, “and you need to just appreciate that and move on.  And you are smart and talented and good and that’s what you need to present.”  

Me, around the time Elliott told me off.

There are millions upon millions of beautiful men, wildly beautiful men.  The most beautiful man I ever saw was a gas station attendant in Manaus, Brazil.  I saw him in 1992 only for a few minutes.  Stunning.  He was obviously poor, thin, dark, hairy, bearded, wild looking, but serene and young, like 25 and perfect.  I bet he didn’t even notice he was the most beautiful man in the world. Took my breath away.  I had no idea how to approach him or what I would have done if I could and he wanted me.  I just had that intense hunger of youth and I couldn’t make sense of what to do with it in that moment.  I saw a couple of similarly beautiful men in 2010 in Hong Kong- two drunk young South Asian (Bangladeshi or Indian) men stumbling on the street.  One looked up at me with some very powerful emotion in his eyes I could not recognize.  Like he could beat me up or kiss me or both.  I was 40, he must have been early 30s.  He was guiding his very drunk brother across the street and barely making it himself.  I stared back for a minute, but didn’t get too close.  Alex Abramov is that beautiful,  Some of the men in this book are that beautiful.  I know a few of these men.  Many were dead before I hit 20 because they were gay adult film stars and I drew them from adult magazines from the 1970s.  Some are my friends here and in New York and in Spain and other places in Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.  I have a thing for Mediterranean men, although I married a German/Irish mutt. And, yes there are a couple self portraits of me in my 40s when I was in good shape (gravity is fighting hard with me these days).

I will always aim for beautiful, warm and kind.  I think that artwork that shows beauty, warmth and kindness well and in a moving way is artwork that achieves art’s highest and most difficult goal.  It is always easier to make something ugly, scary and powerful than it is to make something beautiful, warm and powerful.  Babette’s Feast is a much bigger triumph than Silence of the Lambs. Baghdad Cafe is a much more difficult accomplishment than Platoon. Phil Hale and Francis Bacon create incredibly beautiful work.  Sue Coe hits the nail on the head.  Weapons was a beautifully dark and entertaining movie.  Kathy Acker and Dennis Cooper are incredibly dark and entertaining reads. But I think Mary Cassatt and Ilya Repin and Nikolai Ge are better artists. I would rather read Marina Tsvaetyeva and read Stanislaw Lem or May Sarton.  That’s my opinion. Jimmy Page and Prince are exceptional guitarists but Earl Klugh is my favorite guitar player and while Janis Joplin and Mick Jagger have great voices, I think  Karen Carpenter had the best voice on Earth. And these more “beautiful” artists  are so underrated and so amazing and so neglected.  Check out the people I mention and then let me know what you think. 

So this book opens on what my work really IS ALL ABOUT. Beauty, warmth, love.  The ANTIDOTE to what is happening in the world. It’s not about toughness or winning any race or being super-powerful and having money.  No. My LYONS MEN books are a celebration of the reasons to be alive in this world these days.  An image you can sink your eyes and your heart into.  An image that expresses what it is to be a man in this world.   A gay man.  A little sadly, I don’t think this latest book is geared towards anyone else but my fellow gay men.  I don’t expect appreciation from most of the world. But I am not trying to appeal to most people in the world if I am being honest. I love that straight guys might appreciate it, or straight women, or even lesbians, but it’s very much directed toward gay men who have a certain level of empathy and who have my taste in men and color and light.  And affectionate masculinity.  

A few more of the drawings from that collaboration. If you want to see them all, they are in the drawings section of my website and on my instagram.