Early one Sunday morning, during my weekly ritual of browsing through a local parking lot bizarre, I found a small doll that had missing arms. She had tattered hair, and a general love worn look. Her face was so sweet and the aged look was so intriguing, that I fell in love with her instantly. I was so impressed with the doll that I painted a picture of her sometime later. Just as I was putting the finishing touches on, I realized why I loved this old toy so much. It was my Grandma Martha. My mother’s mother was born without arms and did everything with her feet. She died when I was four, so I wasn’t able to spend much time with this extraordinary woman. I realized that through finding this doll that my grandmother had somehow contacted me and opened my eyes to the time I could still spend with her, maybe not physically, but with her memory.

In my work death is not portrayed as something dark and scary. It is colorful and celebratory. Images of death aren’t comfortable in our society. However, I’ve found that Tibetan and Mexican cultures, whose art influences mine, confront and study death as a means to come to grips with it and as an incentive to seek spirituality. They think beyond this life and base their society accordingly. Death is not always physical. It symbolizes change. Death in exchange for rebirth, this is the fundamental paradigm of religious belief.

My favorite painting is called Worship. An image of a sweet doll-like Chinese girl is holding a halo-ed die on a pedestal. With her inquisitive gaze she asks the viewer, "What do you worship?" What do people worship? idols, possessions, and rewards. They usually desire more than they deserve and seek something that would change their fate. The forces of good and evil battle it out for our soul. This tension is the tightrope upon which my work is balanced.

I was fortunate enough to serve an apprenticeship with a great master of classic American Tattooing, a working class, union-supporting man, Henry Goldfield. I work in San Francisco’s notoriously sleazy North Beach area, famous for its strip clubs and jazz bars, haunted by beatniks and poets, where punk rock exploded, and where vigilantes cleaned up the Barbary Coast in the gold rush days.

Images of chipped teeth, peg legged dogs, burning skulls, and dangerous women, are etched into my consciousness. A transsexual artist once solicited me to tattoo a wood grain pattern on the scars of her shattered leg as an ironic tribute to her almost lost part. My artistic vocabulary can’t help but be affected by this kind of influence, by the regenerative aspects of tattooing, the lifestyle, the transformation of skin, the ultimate canvas.

I live my art. I surround myself by my aesthetic, create my persona, plan and decorate my environment. Through dreams and artistic inspirations the spirit world guides my life and my work.