Jean Paul

When I met Jean Paul Yirka in 2002 he seemed a bit curious when he heard that I had painted in the past. When he saw some of my paintings in 2003 he simply stated: “You will paint again”. There was no question about it - he was stating a fact. And so I painted again. For him.

Jean Paul encouraged and cajoled, and bullied and nurtured my artistic practice back to life. And along the way made heroic efforts to realize this. No matter what other accomplishments I achieved in my day - and some of them very good - I received the predictable feedback from him: “Yeah, but you didn’t paint.” And so I painted.

We found in each other a similar vision, so much so that we could separate in a large gallery for several hours (as once in The Centre Pompidou in Paris), and then come back together at the designated meeting spot, excited to share the best that we had found. Invariably we would bring each other to the very same paintings.