"I can create my own reality, populate the world with my own beings and
stretch the imagination. My paintings are confrontational, not comfortable.
They require viewer participation. You have to imagine what it might be out
there that gives a character such a countenance. What is he responding to?
What is the nature of the abyss into which he gazes?" - Lawrence W. Lee

The history of the Americas is a history of perpetual native uprisings focusing on the basic issues of land, food, and human rights. While the rest of the world was fighting World War I, Emiliano Zapata led his troops dressed in traditional white cotton clothing and sombreros in one of world's best known revolutions, making famous his rallying cry "Tierra y Libertad". Inspired by the Zapatistas, the next well-known land war took place in faraway Bolivia where the campesinos reclaimed their rights to their native lands and won the right to unionize in the mines of Potosi. More recently in Peru, two guerrillero organizations, El Sendero Luminoso (The Shining Path), and Tupac Amaru, a group named after a great Inca rebel, have instigated major Indian uprisings and revealed the tremendous potential for political organization that exists in Native America. Marx and Engels realized the natural state of communism in Native America and wrote particularly of the Iroquois Nation. They discovered communism in America and modeled their theories using Native American societies as a basis, but changed the characters to fit the European material construct. Before the European invasion of the Americas, many native people lived without the private ownership of property and knew no underclass or state of exploitation. Responsibilities to the elderly, the sick and the disabled were managed by the community. As members of a tribe, no one went hungry, unless all were hungry.