Once upon a time...
There was a man, in white and black, and so thin that on his edge, he could cut light, colors, the shapes of night.
The nights he haunted then, the New York nights, with all those shooting stars crossing downtown, in that wild, that dangerous time: the Eighties, East Village, NY.
Yes he collaborated on canvas with his compadre Jean Michel Basquiat, and yes, the beat poet Gregory Corso did a drawing of him. He was from that strange aristocracy, that poem, that uncompromising voyage to the edges of some truth, some life, some art.
The difference with him is that he was there long before, and long after. He survived. And he painted. All along the way, under the radar, he has given us a sharp, formidable story of these times. Leaving thousands of images in his wake, everywhere, in galleries, private collections, forgotten in basements and attics.
Wherever he was, in comfort or in misery, in New York in Paris, or in Toronto, he painted. He couldn’t be anything else…..
– jean francois vallee.