NEW YORK—Angel Ortiz, a onetime protégé and collaborator of Keith Haring, has added his mark to a recently recreated mural by Haring and his companion, Juan Dubose, the New York Times reports.

Haring and Dubose originally created the 50-foot mural, located near Houston Street and the Bowery on Manhattan's Lower East Side, in 1982. In May, admirers of the artist recreated the work, commissioned by the Keith Haring Foundation, Goldman Properties, and Deitch Projects, to celebrate what would have been Haring's 50th birthday.

In July, Ortiz filled in the negative spaces between Haring's now-signature figures with an intricate interlocking pattern and added his tag, "LA II." “When I was painting that mural, I didn’t feel like it was me, I felt like it was Keith’s spirit in me,” he said.

Ortiz, now 41, introduced himself to Haring in the 1980s; Ortiz was a 13-year-old local graffiti artist at the time, and Haring, then 22, had expressed an interest in meeting him. The two quickly became good friends and regular collaborators. “Back then Keith was looking for influences and inspiration," said Fab 5 Freddy, another regular on the scene, "and he got a great deal of it from LA II’s work.”

After Haring's death, Ortiz, who argues he was never given proper credit or profits for his contribution to Haring's now popular and lucrative images, retreated from the art scene and eventually developed a drug problem. He decided to re-emerge only after seeing the recreation of the original mural, which he tagged but did not work on. The Haring Foundation contends that Ortiz “was compensated for all the work he did with Keith Haring in Keith Haring’s lifetime.”

“I don’t want to be rich and famous. What keeps me going is my art,” Ortiz told the Times. “I wanted to show the foundation: This is LA II, this is how it all started.”