Today, I am renewing my public identity as a creative culture warrior. I am doing so by unveiling my new art website, mauerkunst.com, with the able help of my lifetime friend, Will Amato.
Will, an artist himself, a book publisher, and a talented website design professional helped me immeasurably in perfecting the site’s design and execution.
Will and I grew up together in West Los Angeles, in the shadows of UCLA, where Will’s dad, the late Sam Amato, was a distinguished professor of art.
Indeed Sam was an associate and contemporary of great creative legends such as Richard Diebenkorn, Bill Brice, and Charles Garabedian. They were pioneers of the robust West Los Angeles and Santa Monica art scenes of the 1960s and 1970s.
Accordingly, I grew up watching great art unfold on the walls and in conversations all around me throughout my childhood during frequent visits to the Amato home.
During my teen years, Will and his father were huge influences on my evolving artistic passions, and their abiding mark remains with me today. I am as impressed now as I have ever been by the various Sam Amato original works that anchor my personal collection of original paintings. And Will’s lifelong influence on my visual, musical, and performance art preferences remain unsurpassed to this day.
I hope you will enjoy what you find on the newly-unveiled art website that Will and I have prepared for you, and that we share with you here. And I hope that you will continue to make art a central part of your own personal journey. Because, there can be no real love, no true kindness, and no lasting peace in the world without meaningful and unfettered creative expression.