I was born and raised in New York City, the offspring of an Indonesian Ambassador to the UN and his American translator. I was adopted at birth by two agricultural economists who worked for the federal government in Washington, D.C. They were blacklisted during the McCarthy era of the 1950s. My new parents were anti-fascist activists and for this they were caught up in the communist witch hunt of the time. Following their blacklisting, my parents were forced from their profession and community in D.C. and we moved to East Hampton, New York.

East Hampton was home to a growing congregation of free-thinkers, including others affected by the blacklist. During my childhood my parents' world was peppered with a colorful mix of political activists, artists, writers, actors, filmmakers and painters. Marilyn Monroe, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning were all part of the mix, and de Kooning later became a mentor.

I was a painting major / film minor at the Cooper Union art school in New York City and graduated in 1976. I immediately established myself in the burgeoning loft life of lower Manhattan. At that time, New York City was wracked by financial crisis. Artists and other young people were happy to find new homes within the dilapidated industrial loft buildings. There was a new bohemian subculture forming. Artists revitalized downtown New York and briefly transformed it into the art capital of the world.

The downtown energy was electric. Painters, sculptors, musicians, theatermakers, photographers, and videographers were shoving aside the old "isms" of the art world and soaring into a new realm of artistic possibility. The Bohemian mantra was, "Break taboos – invent a new language, hopefully at the same time…" And with that freedom came an ability to do what you wanted. Figuration, abstraction, performance, earthworks, installations, conceptual art – all genres and cross-genres could and would be part of the new creative lexicon.

For the past thirty years I have focused more on painting while being a prop-master on television commercials to support my career as an artist. My experiences in commercial film have been inspirational in keeping my artwork dynamic, immediate and confrontational.  I have recently stopped working on commercial film work and have started making experimental video works again in addition to painting.