(Bill Traylor’s original artwork  on left and William Barry Roberts’ version on right) click on image for larger version

Bill Traylor was an American folk artist that began painting and drawing when he was 70 years old. Though born into slavery in 1854, he was free by way of emancipation very early on in life yet remained in the plantation livelihood for most of his life. This drawing (Red Man Drinking with Figures) has intrigued me for some time, although my immediate thought upon seeing it was alcoholism.  And so I decided to create my own version of this drawing, an homage or possibly just a manifestation of an introspective concept. Our materials are virtually the same; pencils, pens and markers on heavy paper. I imagine the “figures” are the proverbial demons that push this man to drink.

I would have enjoyed sitting down and showing him my version, I’m certain that he would have laughed his ass off……then we could have shared a bottle of whisky.

Medium: Pencils, pens and spray paint on paper

Dimensions: 8.5″ x 11″

The little 18″ sculpture’s heads are made of beeswax melted and sculpted over desiccated apples and body is cotton rope coated with dried soil mixed into acrylic resin. The sculptures, made mostly of organic and edible materials, have remained in the exact condition since they were created (2007).

I was approached in the spring of 2011 by Craig Turner (Craig Turner Gallery Maidstone, UK) about a collaborative art project simply dubbed Tag 33. The idea intrigued me because of the distance between me (USA) and the other artists (UK), as well as cultural and philosophical differences. Most all American artists are firmly schooled in the modern and post-modern approach to art because we simply do not have the history those other older cultures have. My background is technical illustration and design, something even further removed from the expressive and painterly dominion of fine art. Most importantly, however, is that I come from a culture where a career in the traditional arts is not a well-respected vocation. In juxtaposition, Europe has millennia of art appreciation and institutionally developed instincts for the nurturing of it. I know that I can never exceed the sum of my parts, I was made by the ascetic American system….but from the New World I project a kinship with those painters and paintings from a far-off land.

I basically stopped painting and drawing in early 2011 and had not really done much with fine art throughout that year. So receiving the packet of art in the mail from Craig was as if I was a recovering junkie getting a package of fresh heroin in the mail. Many have stated that art is merely a means to relax and express themselves, but to an artist, it is an affliction or a compulsion rooted as deeply as the instinct to breath, eat or procreate.

When I received the artwork from Craig and the others, I immediately saw gleaming amounts of optimism within them.  Many had bright swathes of paint applied in primordial undulating strokes, providing an outlet for unrealized or even new ideas to manifest. I went about creating on them with pens, pencils, paint and spray paint; materials more familiar to hardware and craft stores than fine art. With some, I simply used older drawings that fit within the context of the new collaborative work.  I was able to bring in some of my unrealized Unloved Series concepts and some that I was never able to create beyond simple ideation sketches.

One particular piece Hermaphrodite Pirates Encounter the Sirens was derived from an old sketch that I created some time back. This is a special one for me because it is composed of elements of my mind from the past such as the ancient Greek odyssey mythologies, philosophical absurdism and present scientific knowledge about human genetics and disease. The concept blossomed when I saw the acrylic work on cardstock that Craig had created for this project which would later become the sun-bleached island backdrop for the imagined encounter. The painting was featured in Book 7, Class Clowns issue of Beautiful/Decay Magazine. I was asked to participate in one their conceptual “Projects”, and having just finished the work days before, submitted the collaborative artwork after reading the only given description:

“Laughter is universal; it transcends culture, trends, eras and time. The art world, however, is not thought of as droll. Galleries and museums are stern, intellectual spaces and works of art are discussed in academic terms. And yet in this scholarly world there are artists that buck conventions and use humor to engage us, make us laugh and make us think.”

Unloved

Craig Turner Gallery

52 Union Street Maidstone Kent, England

Gallery Hours: 10am-4pm Tuesday-Saturday

All work is for sale through gallery.

Self Portrait; End of the Angry Man

2011

Dimensions: 11″ x 14″

Medium: Pencil, charcoal, acrylic and spray paint on canvas board

He was Different from us, He had to be killed

To thee, great king, Avernus is assign’d,
The seat of Gods, and basis of mankind.
Thy throne is fix’d in Hade’s dismal plains,
Distant, unknown to rest, where darkness reigns;
Where, destitute of breath, pale spectres dwell,

In endless, dire, inexorable hell;
And in dread Acheron, whose depths obscure,
Earth’s stable roots eternally secure.

O mighty dæmon, whose decision dread,
The future fate determines of the dead,
With captive Proserpine, thro’ grassy plains,
Drawn in a four-yok’d car with loosen’d reins,
Rapt o’er the deep, impell’d by love, you flew
‘Till Eleusina’s city rose to view;

There, in a wond’rous cave obscure and deep,
The sacred maid secure from search you keep,
The cave of Atthis, whose wide gates display
An entrance to the kingdoms void of day.
Of unapparent works, thou art alone
The dispensator, visible and known.

O pow’r all-ruling, holy,
honor’d light, Thee sacred poets and their hymns delight:

Propitious to thy mystic’s works incline,
Rejoicing come, for holy rites are thine.

2011
Dimensions: 11″ x 14″

Medium:
Beeswax/linseed stand oil cold encaustic, oils, and polyester lace on canvas

Language bearers, Photographers, Diary makers
You with your memory are dead, frozen
Lost in a present that never stops passing
Here lives the incantation of matter
A language forever.

Like a flame burning away the darkness
Life is flesh on bone convulsing above the ground

-E. Elias Merhige. 1991

(detail from Tag 33 project)

Collaboration with Craig Turner

Thirsty Old Pirate

Anyone that has ever suffered through addiction, of one kind or another, knows the consistent desperation of ones eventual life. Addictions transform us into people that we were not before, sometimes even for the better, but in the end, always for the worse.

Stigmas abound, but the character of a person is ultimately what defines them. I have seen more than my fair share of abusive, hateful, racist, bigots that never required a single drop of a substance to be that way, and I’ve seen the most pathetic junkies with hearts full of the most honest unselfish love ever known.

The preparatory sketches for this piece were create several years ago, it was after I found just the right piece of maple board refuse that I decided to commit it to oils.