Many of you know I play guitar. I write mini soundtracks for process videos. That has been my musical outlet for years.
But there was a time when the music was a much bigger part of my life. Actually it was a much bigger part of my painting too. In fact it was woven into my painting!
Back at SCAD in the 90’s, on critique day I would bring my painting AND my guitar to class. I’d perform beside the art. The songs would lead you through the paintings.
While most students were like “Here is a still life I painted of an apple next to a vase.” I was like,
“I painted inside this suitcase to symbolize my need to move on in life. (After a break-up.) And I lined the suitcase with material I literally cut from my own couch, to symbolize my low motivation to get off the f’n off the couch! And there are beer cans I hot glued together and hid behind a faux window I made, with sock curtains. The beer cans symbolizing a second type of ‘case’ I was spending too much time with. There is a third case that was more invisible and that was the case of my mind, i.e. a ‘headcase’. Which I could not get out of. Did I mention there is a self portrait painted on the couch material? And clock gears and street numbers and freakin folded mismatched socks that all symbolize (something I can’t remember, probably my mixed emotions.). And oh yeah… here is a song to go with the painting that I will now perform and sing for the class.”
Many of the pieces were interactive like this, so it was suppose to be an immersive experience.I envisioned gallery/museum shows where a set of headphones hung beneath each work.
Before music streaming, getting a new album was an experience. We’d crack open that vinyl, look at every bit of art, and read every lyric while listening to the music. But I wanted to ‘next level’ it, so that every song had its own piece of art. This was the dream. Art and music combined. I’d tour galleries around the country. I could see it all…
But my friends these two muses, music and painting, will rip you apart. The reality was I was much closer to making it as a painter than a musician. (Especially since I never wanted to leave the house and there was no internet, lol!)
To survive, I had to make a choice, and playing guitar 6-8 hours a day was not making me a better painter. I had ideas for days, but I wanted more painting skills to back them up. I figured the music would come back eventually.
So I put the guitar down, cold turkey. It worked. These days I get to illustrate for games like Magic the Gathering, do gallery shows, comic book covers, hollywood stuff, some cool sh!t. It was the right choice.
But before I gave it all up. I made a book of art and songs called ‘EYE Listen’ (Clever, right, lol!) Notice I didn’t say ‘published a book’ cause my dudes it was the most janky home made, folded, stapled hot glued a little tome on the planet. I couldn’t afford pressing a CD so I hot glued a cassette to the back of it. Despite its humble appearance, I had high hopes for it. The last gasp. Funny dreams of famous important people finding that book and it blasting me down the ROCK ART track. I think 12 of them exist. I brought them to a Magic the Gathering tournament thinking they’d sell out. There were 20 people at the event and I sold one. Remember, NO INTERNET!
I took it as a sign to put music aside, for at least a couple years and focus on painting. Didn’t realize it’d be a decade before I touched it again. And only briefly for my children’s book, “JUMP” where I wrote a silly song for little kids about one animal eating another up the food chain. There was an MP3 link to a song buried in the credits at the end of the book. For like a year during the promo for ‘Jump’, I played to kids at schools and bookstores. So in a way, if ever briefly, I did finally get out there with my music and art. (Though it was moshing kids rather than moshing metalheads, lol!!)
But I put the guitar away again. For almost another decade I think. Until I started recording those aforementioned riffs for my process videos. And I am feeling the pull more and more.
Allrighty I know you want a full taste of this madness. Here is ‘Me Island’.
https://youtu.be/bdwFOOyA1go
I remembered ‘me island’ the other day out of the blue, and I re-recorded it with my older slightly more gnarled voice, before I forget it to the years again. This memory got me hunting for the art. The art got me hunting for the book I’d forgotten, And the book, leads us here to Muddy Colors.Isn’t it wild that more people will see and hear that song because of the internet, than any time in its history. What a wild age we live in. If I’d had internet, who knows where my path would have led with this? I dug the painting out of my attic to take you through it along with the song. Be sure to read the captions in the video above. I wrote it soon after the suitcase song, to celebrate the idea of being alone, after a string of long term relationships. Few have ever heard it (or heard me sing, lol).
And here are shots from the rest of the book. Alas I have no working tape player anymore, and I am kinda scared to play the cassette for fear it will be eaten by the machine. But I will get one so I can digitize this music!
In summation, my friends… The Muse can be flirtatious and fickle. … My recent Rock and Roll Fantasy series of paintings are consuming me. They happened organically, working with @wentworthshows , first as a pure fantasy artist, and evolving into a Rock and Roll Fantasy artist. The gallery reps literal rock stars, who are also painters. It doesn’t escape me that I have somehow found a back door into the rock star world, the path not taken. And some of the amazing musicians I am hanging with, who heard my instagram riffs, and dig the art, are offering their skills if I ever make an album. Crazy sauce.
Maybe the muse is back? I am curious what I would do with this music/art combo today. I am already sketching out new song/art mashups. I probably have two albums worth of guitar riffs waiting. It seems to me this is all leading somewhere.
Here is a bonus that didn’t make the book. Wild piece painted on the back of a chair I found in an alley in Savannah all those years ago. If you sit down on it, there was a pressure activated switch that would play a message left on my answering machine that said “*!#$@& I hate you !#$@&. (I will let you fill in the profanity of your choice. Though to be fair, the message was left for my roomate and not me, lol!) I am sure there was a song to go with it, but it is forgotten to time. (Yean those are more beercans stacked up and painted with flames.)
Maybe I have that epic album in me yet.
Thanks for listening (and looking). #90s
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