"I don't paint ROCKSTARS!"

A lot of people, upon viewing certain portions of my portfolio, have advised me against painting famous people.  And I appreciate that.  I get it.  I understand the implications - the stigma of cliche.  In a few paintings I willfully took on cliche images of cultural icons who have had an influence in my life - and just painted 'em anyways.  My intent was to inject them with something alive and fresh - to return to the primary reason for its popularity and perhaps even un-cliche it.  In retrospect, I'm not sure that's possible.  Maybe the most cliche image I have ever painted was a portrait of John Lennon. 

(hi-gloss enamel on canvas, 48" x 60", 2007, sold)

But the question I have is this...  why should I care if a million rabid fans have put this image on tee shirts?  Does that make it poison?  Maybe my take on it is something new - maybe not.  But the point is, from my perspective, I love this guy!  Have you heard his music?  Its anything but cliche.  So what does it take for something to become a cliche?  Was "Stairway to Heaven" a brilliant song - undeserving of the mockery it receives to this day - before it was played to death by the always reverent "classic rock radio"?  Is "Free Bird" to be forever relegated to the obnoxiously cliche request hollered from the audience at every rock show that let a drunken numbskull through the door?  Fact is these are both amazing songs (listen to them again) but they have been rendered irrelevant by their overuse.  Same with the image of Lennon.  And in essence, that of every face that pop media has exploited to such an extent. 

But when I painted Syd Barrett it was not cliche.  Why?  Seems nobody knows who he is.  If you don't either, you're not alone - but he was the true demented genius whose inspired brilliance gave birth to what was called "Cosmic Rock" in the mid 60s.  He was the central founding member of Pink Floyd.  Most folks only know "The Wall", "Wish You Were Here" and "Dark Side of the Moon" - all amazing records in their own right - especially if you listen to more than the hits - but there is so much more to this band.  Their first few records sound nothing like the ones they became known for - mainly because Syd was no longer in the band after these initial albums.  He was known as the sad story of the sixties - the acid casualty who just did too much and couldn't function in society.  He did go on to record a few more records of his own - with a little help from his former bandmates who respected him greatly but were unable to work with him full time.  His music was childlike, soulful, brilliant and what I would call the most sincere music ever created.  He died a few years ago and the music industry was in complete shock at the out pouring of grief and tributes to Syd that appeared on the internet. 

. 

(hi-gloss enamel on canvas, 48" x 60", 2007, available)

He is one of the very best in my book.  But is his image cliche?  Hardly.  He still remains a fairly obscure figure mainly because neither his early Floyd work nor his later solo efforts were embraced by mainstream radio and hence not destroyed or relegated to the "oh this again" catagory.  Mick Rock, a well known photographer of musicians over the last 5 decades, snapped the most amazing shots of Syd.  Apparently they were friends and this made it easy.  Syd was an exceptionally good looking guy and his dark opal eyes and tussled mop of hair made him all the more intriguing.  There are the incredibly beautiful shots of him that Mick had shot right after Syd had painted stripes on the floor of his flat.  There is another shoot of Syd out on the street - hanging around the sidewalk, near a great old car - and the image I worked from came out of this roll.  The point of view that the shot is taken from is what makes it such a great image.  I picture Mick standing up on the car that we see in the other shots and shooting down at Syd.  The foreshortening is fantastic.  As I worked on this painting I wondered what to do with the background.  I've never been big on fitting my subjects into a scene or bringing in symbolic elements.  I usually just leave it up to the brush.  What happened was a psychedelic explosion of color all around him.  And that seemed to make the most sense for our beloved Madcap.

(enamel on window, 34" x 42", available)

The Syd on the window pane was a commissioned piece that has since found its way home to me and is back on the market.  Long story but to make it short - one of my babies has come back home.

A few good months ago in 2009, I decided that I was done painting rock stars and other cliche figures.  I would finally do as I've been so often advised and stick to my live portraits or remote, obscure images.  And I have done a lot of stuff in that category.  Over the summer of '09, I did one of my residencies on Orchard Street and out of the hundreds of portraits I painted in watercolor on paper and in acrylic on found materials, two paintings really stand out to me as portfolio-worthy images.  One is the portrait of Zandy Mangold, the photographer from the NY Post, who came by GalleryBar and snapped a few shots of me during an interview. 

(acrylic on crushed metal form, 10" x 12", sold)

Every once in a while, when I'm painting these fast impressions on scraps of junk, something clicks.  I never quite see it coming - I'm just sort of plodding along, doing my thing - when suddenly, a few strokes into a piece I'm like, "Holy crap - I think we've got one!"  And then of course, I'm a little sad to see it go :(  But these pieces are generally pre-sold and I kiss 'em good-bye before I paint 'em.  The portrait of Zandy, who was a really nice guy, turned out reminding me of those Egyptian-Roman era portraits in the Metropolitan.  You know the ones... painted in wax on wood panels just there on the west wall of the first big Egyptian room.  They were painted in about 70 AD and look about as contemporary as any portrait painter's work today.  So why did it take 1400 years to get back to realistic proportion in the Renaissance?  Of course, we blame the church.

How's that for an unplanned resemblance?  What I love so much about these early Roman portraits is just the straight-forwardness of them - the simplicity and the sincerity.  Concise, clear, unfettered.  Sometimes it just happens that way - of course, only when you're not thinking too much or trying to be something specific - just painting. 

My second favorite of the summer was of a young lady named Haley.  This piece looks nothing like the Met, in fact I'm not sure what museum it could fit in.  But once again, amidst hundreds of these things being rattled off day after day, this one hit the mark.  Haley was pretty and nice with a fun sense of style and a cool crew of friends hanging around.  Some folks come to sit down with their sourness in full effect and I generally respond with a rather uninteresting portrait.  Sorry - I calls 'em as I sees 'em.  But Haley was smiling and full of life and seemed like just a sweet and happy person.  

(acrylic on wood and plastic maze game, 14" x 17", sold)

I painted Haley on a chunk of old game junk that had this great fuzzy red tassle on top.  As I usually ask my sitters to do, she chose it out of the pile of stuff I had laying around and I was amazed that no one had spotted this beauty sooner.  I ask people to choose something to be painted on, and there is no wrong response, but I feel more aligned with the folks who just dive right in and pick the most fun object in the pile.  When Haley chose this weird old game board, I knew I had a live one.  Maybe it was the weather or what I ate or her nice energy or the music that was playing - there are innumerable variables at work in our lives at all times - but whatever it was, this one was working from the get-go.  I'm not sure where I got the blue in the reflected light on her face or the red shadows but I wasn't thinking too much - just grabbing color and slapping it around - and it fell together pretty effortlessly.  I guess that's just what happens when you crank out a couple hundred pieces in the same basic template... occasionally you strike a vein.  Just so I don't come off as cocky, let me explain that there were a handful of pieces (if not many) over the course of this residency that didn't do a thing for me.  Some just plain stunk.  But I don't feel like showing those right now so :P

But I digress.  The whole point of this BLAHg was to talk about how I don't paint rock stars anymore.  Or do I?  Well, it goes like this... I enjoy being versatile and like to think of myself as a resourceful sort and, as an artist exhibiting on a regular basis, every once in a while you need to pull an art show out of your... ear.  It just so happened that this December I was asked to do that very thing.  A curator friend of mine said, "Hey - how about a show of rock star paintings?  You have a ton of those, and you could do a bunch of little ones, and we'd have a sort of holiday, small-works, gifty-like rockstar show."  Don't you love gallery people?  So I said, "Well, I don't really paint rock stars anymore but maybe just this one last time."  I know, I sound like an addict.  But what can I say?  I love rock and roll - from Chuck Berry to Ween, from The White Stripes to Gogol Bordello, and from The Pixies to Deep Purple!  Just try and keep me away from it!  You will lose.

So without too much more blabbing, here is a pile of rocks that fell out of me that week.  They are all hi-gloss on canvas, 20" x 24".  A few of my favorite idols...

There were a few more but these are the best ones I guess.  Some were sold along with the Cobain but with the exception of Mr. C, all of the above are still available.  If you don't know who they are - ask somebody - they'll tell you.  Yes, some of these images are cliche.  Especially the most enigmatic and brilliant of the bunch - Hendrix and Kurt.  But it comes down to this...  I love to paint.  I do it A LOT.  And I mostly don't even care what I'm painting - I know how to find a way to enjoy it. 

I am working on a number of things recently - not rock stars or recognizable figures.  My new work is focused on groups of people or single figures incorporated into a background.  I have always simply floated my subjects on a field of color or texture - usually provided by the object supporting it.  But I am exploring some new ideas.  I'm not stepping away from portraiture because, even in my figurative work, the eyes and the expression in the face are the key points of focus.  But I am looking for something new and when I've found it, I'll be sure to let you know. 

I guess I will always continue to paint cultural icons and figures whose contributions to society I find intriguing.  I was recently commissioned to paint a scene of the Lower East Side - to show "the old and the new".  I threw myself into it and immediately hit a brick wall.  Ouch.  I realized this - I love the OLD Lower East Side and pretty much hate the new.  I cling on to what is left and pray that I'll wake up one morning to find the new is just not there anymore.  But, as I've gone into on a previous blog, we can't get all attached to the way things were or we make ourselves ill.  I personally believe that the number one cause of disease on Planet Earth is attachment.  We all need to learn how to let go.  Thing is, for the most part, that's not too easy.

So being a portrait guy, I decided to paint somebody we all know and love from the LES.  I decided that I would include the East Village in my scope of the LES - since the term "East Village" was created as a subdivision of the Lower East Side by realtors hoping to increase the neighborhood's appeal in the late 80s.  Guess it worked, huh?  I decided that since Avenue C is in the East Village or Alphabet City and Avenue C is also named Loisaida Avenue, then I could officially re-merge the two neighborhoods.  I painted Allen Ginsberg in his Uncle Sam hat and surrounded him with images I had shot in the hood.  I took photos of the great old tenement buildings and the shiny glass towers that are looming over them.  I shot walls of graffiti and street signs and whatever I felt was relevant and collaged them all around him.  And guess what the first response was to my painting.  "Who's the guy in the hat?"

So I either did a crappy job rendering a likeness of this revered Beat Poet or we now live in a neighborhood clueless of its history.  I didn't bother asking.  This image is to be used as the front cover of the LES Gallery Guide.  But even now the issue is under debate because my painting is being termed "too edgy".  Yes, I know, I must have heard them wrong.  Thats what I thought.  But, no - they did say, "Too edgy."  Now you can say a lot of things about my work.  You can say its too traditional or its too much focused on faces or its idealized or whatever.  But "Edgy"?  REALLY??!! 

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah!!!!!!!!  Oh my GOD!  Are you @#$%&*! kidding me?!  Me?!  EDGY????!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!  Oh my good god I'm LMFAO (as my niece would say).  Holy crap - I nearly peed in me trousers.  Anyways - can someone please explain this to me?  Because once I get done laughing myself into pangs and bruises, I will no doubt require a bit of enlightening.  You could say I'm an arrogant bastard for putting a picture of my gallery in there (or the shot of my truck).  But edgy?  Oh boy.  Maybe you should look at some of the art out there these days.  There is a ton of really great edgy art - EVERYWHERE!  And god forbid any edginess would come from the Lower East Side, right?  Even if I were so-called "edgy" - wouldn't it be appropriate for this neighborhood??  Somebody kill me now please.  I went to sleep and woke up in conservative cookie-cutter 1950s HELL.  Christ, Hyronymous Bosch was more edgy than me and he was working about 1400 years ago!  FOR THE CHURCH!!!

Anyways - what I really wanted to say is, along with famous poets you may or may not have heard of, I've painted one last rock star.  Its one of those big paintings (60" x 48") in hi-gloss enamel and its one I painted this past December for part of that rockstar show.  There are a million different musicians out there but very few with the virtuosity and universal appeal of this guy.  The piece in question is still available at the time of this long-winded typing session.  Time to get up and stretch.  Peace.