When I moved to New York in 1980, I knew exactly what I was looking for.
I was looking for a place where I could live openly as a gay man. I was looking for community. I was looking for a life where I didn’t have to explain or defend who I was. Like so many people before and after me, I came to New York searching for the freedom to become myself.
My first job was at Kiss My Cookies. Not long afterward, I went to work at All State Art on the corner of Christopher and Bleecker. From there I moved to TR’s Gallery, one of Circle Fine Art’s galleries, where I eventually became the manager.
This week I was back in New York because one of my drawings was included in The Ordinary, a group exhibition at Collective Z Gallery on the Lower East Side.
While walking through Midtown, I found myself standing in front of the building where TR’s Gallery used to be.
The gallery is gone. The ground floor is now a souvenir store. But the building is still there.
Standing there, I realized that I had come to New York searching then, and I had come back searching now.
The questions have changed.
At twenty-six, I was trying to figure out how to live.
At seventy-three, I’m trying to understand what that life has meant.
Maybe that’s one reason I’ve returned to making art.
The drawings aren’t simply images. They have become a way of looking back, asking questions, and seeing connections I couldn’t see while I was living them. More and more, the work feels autobiographical—not because it illustrates events from my life, but because every drawing carries something of the person who made it.
The gallery is gone.
The search isn’t.
