"A Chance Encounter with a One DJ Coco, Revisited"

Semi Abstract DJ

Vanderbilt radio station in Nashville, TN on Saturday nights used to play techno trance music back in the early 2000s. There was nothing else, no digital stations, nothing. I was still in the US Army at the time and other than special orders from a local music shop you could not find good trance music. It was something I waited for every Saturday night; in fact, I built a large antenna in my yard just to be able to pick up the radio station.

There were two 2-hour sets that would come on back to back. The first set was DJ Ron and I would record every set on cassette tape leaving out the commercials. I listened and painted to those tapes for 10 years, easily. Pretty good DJ for his time. Then after that set would be a more downtempo DJ and her name was DJ Coco.

One of the most beautiful women I've ever set my eyes on, drop dead amazing in every way. One of the smartest creatures I've ever met as well. So, I would be listening to her set many times after DJ Ron and at one point I decided to call her up while she was in the radio station and asked if I could come do a painting simultaneously while she DJ'd. She thought it sounded like a good idea and so we arranged it.

I took a pretty big painting in there with me about 5 ft by 6 ft, with a giant portable easel that I had made. I never finished the piece, but it was still a cool experience (I later lost the piece to a move). Soon after this I did another piece and named it "A Chance encounter with a one DJ Coco". I love the original piece and honestly, I have no idea where it went. I have some photos of it and that's about it.

I tried to recreate the painting back in 2011 on a much larger scale. The results I got were Meh. It hung in my coffee shop for years and I never cared much for it. Fast forward 10 years and I decided to really take it to another level. I always knew it wasn’t finished, it lacked a lot and at the time I didn’t really know what. I took some chances with this one, that’s what you see here, and the results are amazing to me. I really like the way this piece was born, existed, and then got reborn. It's a massive piece and we'll stop anybody while in its presence.