I used to hang out with Vincent Van Gogh.

He reminded me that art doesn’t have to make sense or money or waves—it just has to be true.

Not the real one, of course. But someone close. Someone who burned just as bright and strange, someone who lived in his art and couldn’t not make it, even when the world barely noticed. His name was Freaky Steve.

I met him at ERT Night in St. Louis—a chaotic, electric gathering of artists in the dark, thumping basement of Jamie and Lana’s house. The lights swung overhead while people painted, drew, sculpted, made music, and schemed future collaborations. It was the kind of place where nothing mattered and everything mattered all at once. That’s where I found him: Steve, this slight, wiry man with hair that flew away from his face like it had just leapt from a rope swing aiming for a lake.

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He painted with goopy, lush piles of oil paint—thick as buttercream frosting, sculpted with a brush into thousands of tiny curls and ridges. The texture dried into waves and peaks you could almost surf with your eyes. But my favorite piece of his wasn’t a painting. It was a drawing of a simple diner counter—bottles of syrup and ketchup, salt shakers, little reflections in chrome—rendered in tangled, multicolored lines from a thousand different pens. He worked it so hard into the paper that you could read the image from the back with your fingertips. It was obsessive and tender. Like a memory trying not to disappear. It reminded me of those old comic books with the red-and-blue 3D glasses—slightly offset lines that made your eyes hum.

Steve was a varied artist, like me—sketching, screen printing, music with a synthesizer and a beat-up computer, miniature train models with painted trains, hills, and tiny hand-made trees. I showed him the miniature paper castles I made with rocks and bridges, and he said, “We should do a show together.” So we did. We took over a tiny, vacant storefront in a quiet St. Louis neighborhood, not far from the head shop where we both sold art. Hardly anyone came. But it felt wild, organic, unknown, and unimportant—and somehow also like the most important thing we could’ve done. He called it the Blue Orange Gallery.

We crossed paths all over the city—at that head shop, at a friend’s bakery café, sipping coffee and painting, or just talking about art and life.

There was something about Steve that carried the spirit of Van Gogh—not just in the texture and intensity of his work, but in the way he burned with creative urgency, lived slightly outside the world, and told the truth even when it was uncomfortable. He was heartbreakingly genuine. He held some extreme views. Conversations could get intense. But he was kind, thoughtful, and radically sincere. I respected his passion. I valued his vulnerability. He reminded me that art doesn’t have to make sense or money or waves—it just has to be true.

Freaky Steve. I haven’t seen or heard of him in years.

I used to hang out with Vincent Van Gogh. And I’ll never forget it.

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