The story of how I met my all-time favorite artist!!! May he RIP…

Sometime in or around the year 2000 I think I stumbled onto a book by Paul Laffoley which revealed what he called his Architectonic Thoughtforms. Anyhow, the point is that I became completely enamored with the style and content of his paintings the moment I laid eyes on them. I was totally transfixed by the genius of it all. I read everything I could about him and I talked about his work incessantly. I must have annoyed all my friends going on and on about this modern day Renaissance Man.

Eventually, I decided that I had to meet the guy. So, I found out his address and wrote him a letter explaining how I had been working on a theory of time that I thought would be of interest to him. I praised him and thought I had written a damn fine letter, when it was all said and done. Then, I mailed it to him and waited. I waited and waited and waited. Then I stopped waiting on that fucking guy who couldn’t even at least fucking write me back. What the fuck was his deal!

Years went by!!! Then, one day, out of the blue, I got a letter in the mail. Sure as shit, it was from him. He had even sent me his phone number and asked me to call him. Holy fucking shit was I excited. I was beside myself with joy, but I called that very instant. He answered with a subtle Boston accent cautiously proclaiming “who is this?” — convinced I must be a bill collector come to find out.

Once I got him to understand who I was, he apologized for the delay in his reply. He assured me that my letter to him had been misplaced by an assistant, so Paul had just recently found the old mail. I felt bad for thinking that he was inconsiderate but I played it off like I hadn’t noticed. Regardless, we hit it off on the phone right away.

I don’t know which one of us asked more questions. We talked about Star Trek and the nature of consciousness and different art media and then he invited me to his home. He told me that I could come stay the weekend at his studio with him. I was totally in shock and I can’t even describe the elation that I felt that day.

The thing was that I wasn’t going to meet with him for weeks to come. I worked him up in my mind thinking I might find a time machine under a sheet once I arrived. I wanted to see his medical images and examine his scalp for incision marks to understand if he was really implanted by aliens. Would his autism prevent us from making a real connection in person? I had no idea what to expect.

But none of that mattered, I planned a trip with my wife Brandy and when the day came she drove us straight through from Zion Illinois to Southborough Massachusetts. We took lots of Adderall to make the drive and she did it all herself — the poor girl. Regardless, she took me to Paul’s studio in Boston from her uncle’s house and when I arrived I was totally blown away.

He immediately noticed the portfolio of artwork that I was carrying and begged me to show him my work, but I just wanted to see his stuff. Nonetheless, I relented and opened up what I was toting around and showed him what I brought. He looked at some tarot cards for a deck I was making as well as some charts and diagrams for that project as well as many others. He devoured my stuff and yearned to see more but that was all that I had brought with me. Then, he praised me. My idol was telling me how much he liked the crap I was almost to embarrassed to bring. Holy fucking shit was I blown away in that moment, and then it got better.

A little later he told me about his work as the Boston Visionary Cell and how he would like me to charter a Chicago Visionary Cell. I was totally speechless, then he said that I should probably go meet Alex Grey who runs the New York Visionary Cell. This was just too much!!! I am an amateur painter at best and these guys are my fucking idols. I look up to Paul and Alex like gods and he was just talking about all of this so casually. meanwhile I was like pissing myself, scared to death by the prospect of finding a dozen people to sign up with me and then for me to produce paintings that I could be proud of. What the fuck was going on here??? This was just much too much!!!

Then it took a turn for the worse. After all that I was offered a writing job with Paul to turn out what he called “event-facts”. He had assigned me the years 2038 to I think 2054 or something like that and I was supposed to write ten predictions tracing the flow of sensibilities. It was crazy. This was the opposite of what I had just felt because I didn’t want to do this because I thought that when I was proven wrong in my own lifetime I could never live it down. At this rate I will never be accepted in the world of academia anyhow, but especially not with that kind of stigma. It seemed foolish to do his book and overwhelming to become a serious painter with him at the same time.

In the end we never collaborated on anything but, the weekend that I spent with him was more than I could have ever dreamed for. I got to know everything about him for three straight days. He didn’t even paint the whole time really and he lived to paint, let me tell you. Paul was such an amazing character.

He took me out for dinner after I hung the blinds in his new studio and we even went out to a movie. He sat us in the front row, dead center and he sat on the edge of his seat wide eyed and mystified by the crappy flick. I was in a surreal state of joy the entire time. I was appalled that no one recognized him, but of course no one knows who some eccentric ahead-of-his-times artist is. No one but me, and he was all mine for a whole weekend.

We talked about the time he channeled Nikola Tesla during a seance and he showed me his lion’s foot leg from Stan Winston, the Hollywood special effects icon. He told me about being at Woodstock but not actually attending and how he worked with Andy Worhol and how his mom was an architect so he renewed his license for her not him and so much more. I even got to see the X-rays of his head. He has a really weird smooth metal object next to his pineal gland and not a scratch on his head. Did I mention he shaved everything daily — no eyebrows, no sideburns, nothing, just a mess in the bathroom everyday. Bless his heart!

Most of all, I will never forget being able to flip through stacks of his enormous canvases and looking at all of his work in progress on models and paintings and sculptures and more paintings and then even more half finished paintings wrapped in plastic or stacked against the wall. He has done so much amazing work throughout the years. His work is unrivaled and unparalleled…

My only regret is that we only shared but one weekend together. He was one-of-a-kind and he will truly be missed, but he left behind a tremendous legacy of work. The world lost a great man when Paul passed away from it!

R.I.P. PAUL LAFFOLEY

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