with a bang

I have an idea for a character in a novel or a movie: a Southerner born in Missouri whose parents are carny folk; they travel around the country with freak shows and a three-ring circus, stopping here and there to put on shows and soak up the atmosphere. Along the way, the Southern boy gets real good at drawing detailed caricatures of the people around him. As soon as he's old enough, he attends the New York High School of Music and Art, where Arturo Toscanini gives weekly lectures and his contemporaries include the likes of Leonard Bernstein. He skips college, marries his high school sweetheart and gets a job in a Detroit factory, but it isn't enough. He puts together a stand-up act where he uses his drawing skills to tell jokes under a stage name. When this doesn't help, he gathers the family up, sells off most of possessions, and heads to Los Angeles to paint portaits for a living.

Among the posh and wealthy Beverly Hills crowd, the Southerner (now the Artist as a Young Man) finds many patrons, and over time begins to creates a unique body of work that, until yesterday, escaped my attention.

As you can tell by now, this is no made-up scenario at all: the Southern Artist is a real man named Charles Bragg, and I discovered his art by accident while returning books to the library.

I am trying to get myself revved up for another painting. Lately I've been scheduling my hobbies in weekly increments: when the UCLA exhibit went down, my week was devoted to paint; the week after that, I stopped blogging frequently and concentrated on writing the Jarry screenplay; the week after that saw me working on my own music and doing some animation-related tasks; last week was devoted to other people's music, in the two or three bands I'm in at any given time; and now, I am trying to get myself geared up for next week, because I need this week to be a breather of sorts.

The weekly thing is not only a handy way for me to juggle my various projects-- it also happens to resemble the way I work. I get bored after about six or seven days, and so other projects are on standby indefinitely as my attention wanders. I don't have ADD-- if I had a deadline I'd bang everything out as quickly as possible. But since I have no real deadlines to meet, I can take my time cultivating my projects.

Anyway, I have taken a liking to Bragg's work because it reminds me of some of my favorite artists. Most notably, I see a resemblance to the work of Terry Gilliam of Monty Python fame. In fact, I thought Bragg was British when I first leafed through a collection of his work while lookng for more conventional art books by accepted masters. There's definitely something very Old World about his work, despite his apparent American-ness.

As you'll see when you look at Bragg's work via the link I provided, Bragg's a bit of a master himself. His realm is that of the caricature-- distorted shapes, bulbous noses, and spectacular grotesques are the hallmarks of his pieces. I showed the book to a fellow artist-- a graffitti tagger --and he was amazed at the similarities between certain graffitti styles and Bragg's work.

I like the details of his bio-- the weirder the better. Here's a quote from the man himself:


"...[T]hings can never be boring or predictable as long as there's a human race. It's guaranteed to always have lots of sparks flying. T.S. Eliot said we won't go out with a bang but with a whimper. I disagree with him 100 percent. We're gonna go out with a bang."


I think I'm going to set up my paints, and just start painting with no idea in mind-- automatic painting, if you will. That's the way I draw, actually-- I never pre-plan sketches. If I am trying to capture something specific, I draw in my notebook over and over until one of them comes out right. Otherwise, I throw caution off the cliff and just dive right in.

I think I'll shoot for Sunday. That way, I can listen to The Beatles on the radio, order breakfast delivered from Andre's, and get all dirty and painty before I even step into the shower. Then I can let the paint dry and smoke. Afterwards, when I'm satisfied for the time being, I'll watch The Simpsons on TV and maybe even head out to Paulie's place for a late-night BBQ.

Yes, the summer is here, and I'm prepared.