When Chieko was two, in 1996, I bought her this children’s art program—Kid Pix. I started messing around with it myself, and it blew my mind. I was hooked. It was the most fun I had had making art since back in the sixties, when my mother would take me to the head shop inside the Farmer’s Market (Bethpage L.I.!) to do spin art. For the next six months I was completely obsessed with Kid Pix. I became so adept at it that I was convinced that I had figured out how to do stuff with it that the creators themselves had never imagined. I was the Master of Kid Pix. I showed sixty of them at the Red Door Gallery in NYC and they were a big hit. After having exhibited them, however, the Kid Pix seemed to have run their course. This happens. The novelty was over. The Master hung up his mouse. The following year I would begin painting in oil, studying with Pat Witt at her Barn Studio in Milville, N.J.

Birthday Invitation, 1996

Christmas card, 1996