Figure since this is my first journal entry it would be a good idea to tell and show you a little about who I am and what I do.

Born in Santa Ana, California on September 23, 1966, I grew up in El Toro, California. My mother tells that I have been drawing since I was 9-years-old. I didn't feel like a real Artist until the mid 80s when I left El Toro, and moved north to Sonoma County. My uncle bought me my first airbrush and turned me on to the artworks of Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley, Richard Ash, Pat Ryan, Don Delew and Nat Quick. I was really inspired by their full-colour t-shirts and monster calendars, and sharp images.

I began airbrushing, sometimes four to five hours straight. I stayed with the technique for several years, and then in the 1990s, I became interested in acrylic paints and began painting acrylic on canvas.

[Wynton Marsalis, acrylic on canvas]

[Enrico Rava, acrylic on canvas]

I am self taught and have had no formal art lessons. My artwork is spontaneous, and I enjoy painting abstracts. I like to paint strange things to get people's attention.I love to sign my art work before I finish it. Things and places I've painted include shoes, pants, couches, pillow cases, ties, Matt Cornfoot's ceiling in his house, Sammy Hagars jacket, the bathroom at Johnnys Java Inn coffee house in Cotatie, California t-shirts doors, wooden ducks, telephones, beads, and many other items too numerous to list.

These days I paint on stage to live music. Most recently, I have been painting on wood fiber boards with acrylic and mixed media. Some of the bands I have performed with include Alfred Howard and the K23 Orchestra, Fishbone, Acacia, and Frogdog Rocks. The review below will give you a better idea of what it's about.

Morris & Barbosa
By Michelle O’Kane

I arrived at Petaluma’s Ground Up Cafe to see and hear Morris & Barbosa improv Jazz and performance art show. I sat down on the burnt umber velvet couch with a latte and a piece of hot cherry pie slathered in whipped cream. As if that wasn’t enough to spike my happy-meter, I became instantly intrigued by the stage in front of me, strewn with paper-plate paint pallets that look like big multi-colored polka-dots in front the bass drum, up against the amps and scattered haphazardly amongst the cords.

Neal Barbosa, the artist, is wearing a spotless white terry-cloth bathrobe, his pocket full of brushes and on his head a helmet-like-hat made of a manipulated melted LP (The Rolling Stones’ Satanic Majesty’s Request) with dangling gold-foil tabs to give it flare. He resembles a fighter dancing in the ring, sizing-up the blank canvas in front of him. The anticipation of watching Neal turn himself into a human Handi-Wipe in that over-bleached white robe was exciting enough, but then the musicians began to play.

In less than three bars, Lee Penny on bass and Zachary Morris on drums took me out of Petaluma and into a smoke-filled Paris nightclub with Charlie Parker sitting anonymously at a dark corner table. Their sound so classic, so clean, so zoned, I wondered how many hours these guys had been warming up.

The drum solo transports Neal as he chews on one brush; his swipes electrify the canvas with every jazz sizzle of the cymbals.

Now the music brings us back to America, urban jazz of ‘60s Detroit. A little funk pierces the bass line and Neal places a toilet bowl plunger in the upper-right quadrant of the canvas. Dark menacing blacks, grays and maroons gather around the protuberating plunger. I began to worry that shtick was going to mar the first time I was truly enjoying and appreciating performance art. I tried to take comfort in the understated way he plunged the plunger; it wasn’t for show, it was deliberate and somehow functional.

Just as it was beginning to bother me, the band leaves Detroit for Chi-town. Up the tempo, up the snare, and Neal is bringing on the blues - cool midnight blue blows up the canvas from the right - looking like a mildly frenzied Picasso, he wipes his brush on his robed hip, using his elbow to blend the blues. Before the downbeat the plunger is off and Neal is slapping colors as sharply as the snare slaps the bass line.

The painting has taken shape: Neal is showing us the music in color, line and texture. It’s Bohemian at its best because the talent is authentic, trained and innate.

We are traveling again, somewhere here on the West Coast but with an East Coast accent. The music is new, original and now belongs souly to the two young men on stage. This ain’t no flat-land jazz, this ain’t no acid-jazz, this is the early jazz of the new millennium and Neal’s canvas is bright with green, purple, and give-it-to-me-orange.

Neal strips away some tape placed earlier but he doesn’t discard it, he wears the tape like soldiers wear badges, with honor in the moment. The lines created by the tape add clarity and layered dimensions synonymous with the music we are hearing. The painting is alive and seems to exhale the energy of the music we just heard - and with a slight gasp, the audience suddenly realizes that we just listened to that painting happen. Neal has managed to go between the senses of sight and sound and express it for our enjoyment.