Do you think you can get a sense of the person that he was by looking at his art work?
To a certain extent, I suppose. You wouldn't really, if you didn't know him, get a picture of him by looking at his work. I would get a picture of [an Asian mystic] sitting there, with a long, spindly white beard. You get more of a picture of his mind - his mind comes through in the pictures.

What do you think that Jack would think of having his work posted on an internet web site?
It's hard to tell. I think he'd go for it. He was one of those types that wasn't into a lot of technology, the sort of person who is always trying to pull the plug out. If the lights went out, it wouldn't have bothered him - he pulled the plug on himself, anyway, up on the islands. But, I'm sure he would be pleased to have his work more available. It's a way of keeping him out there, especially for the students. It's keeping me out there as well.

His work, in many ways, can be divided into two groups: his brush work and his mandala work. Which do you feel he was more passionate about?
Probably his brush work. He felt the most freed by his brush work. The mandalas were more studied - he sometimes drew them out. The black and white pieces were in a smaller format, and they didn't go into the detail of the mandalas. I had several of them - they really were gems.

You were one of the few people who actually knew him before he moved to Canada. I was wondering if you could maybe comment on some of his earlier work.
It was quite different from what he was doing here. In Mexico, he was working on larger works, he was working on collages at the time. I remember one, specifically, that was burnt paper. He was in a transition period, in Mexico, very influenced by Abstract Expressionism, yet to reach the Oriental way of approaching art. There was no line, and then there was: you sort of paint blindly, and then you sort of sit back and you look at it. It was very much another mode.