Ready to Articulate Book

Mark Gonzales is always on the go, and his teenage years in 1980's Los Angeles were spent traversing the streets with his moving canvas. He earned a reputation as a pioneer of modern skateboarding – a master, not because of perfection or precision, but by achieving true mastery. It was as if he broke the laws of nature, causing time and space to bend to him, leaving a wake of influential agitation behind him. His art, like his poetry, is not separate from his skating. Gonzales’s canvases are filled with painterly technique honed over years of drawing and painting, but they are also both precise and imprecise at the same time. Imperfect, yet perfect. This particular body is inspired by the disappointment he felt when his business partner “sold out” in the early 1990's, the faces are bursting with bitterness. They are put-on fake smiles, cheerful in the face of misery and embarrassment. Years later, however, those feelings softened, and the power of the smiles won. Indeed, Gonzales seems to be saying, flowers, grown in even the harshest of conditions, can have an immutable healing power. 28 Pages 24.5 x 24.5 cm Color Offset First Edition 2023 ISBN 978-3-907179-50-5