Charcoal, Paint, Plaster and Collage: Listening to The Fixx and Trying to Find a New that Doesn’t Include Abstraction

Downtown
mixed media
29 1/8 x 37 1/8 inches
1985

In the mid-1980s’ the FIXX was a large part of my consciousness.  Their sound represented something new as I was trying to find something new myself.  The sound sounded urban, and confined to an apartment building, Richardson, Texas was the most urban lifestyle I had ever lived.

I worked in charcoal.  For me the medium was not about sketching.  I took it seriously and saw the drawings as painting.  Some of the paintings wound up being very large.  At 40 x 60 inches, I’d pretty much reached the upper limits of paper.  To go any further, I needed a path that didn’t include paper or glass.  I am not sure why I thought charcoal on plastered canvas would work.  Although it had to be sealed, the combination of charcoal, plaster, canvas and paint had a physical grit that was fitting for a vision of the city.

Downtown near DMA
charcoal and acrylic
40 x 56 inches
1985

Although not on plaster, previous experience had included stretched fabric, so I began to think of black and white paint.  Most of the time, I didn’t use paint out of a tube, but chose to mix charcoal powder in with matte medium.  I liked the fact that it lacked consistency.  It was like a gritty black pancake batter that sometimes cracked as it dried.  The painting didn’t happen as a single phase or endeavor.  Although always urban, it was a while before it acquired the edge I was looking for.  When I started, it may not have been about Less Cities, More Moving People.  However, I frequently listen to the FIXX.  I didn’t use it as background music.  I never cared to listen passively.  Which means, I listened to a lot of silence.  I hated places where people automatically turned the music on as soon as they got to work, and then played it the entire day as a way of escaping.  I’m all for music as another realm, but continuous sound only confirms a drowning reality of an inability to break away for even a moment.  I don’t know if this is the case, but it seemed to me that people who needed television or radio as a constant companion were afraid of being alone, that an empty mind might hold the mangled sounds of desperation.  It is not that I was free from pain, it’s just that I enjoyed thought even when it hurt.  There was a part of me that didn’t want to hide.  Instead of trying to dull my senses with drugs or alcohol, the weekend was all about seeing.  Life often happened within the cracks of a morning stroll.  I didn’t need a hot cup of coffee to get me started.  There was never any need to start a day of observation.  Sights and sounds simply invited life in.  It was easy to love the discarded cigarette butts and fallen leaves of my surroundings.

Moving from black and white to color included elements of collage and spray paint.  I guess I didn’t want definite edges, or maybe the spray can was just sitting around and I grabbed it to see what would happen.  Painting often goes no deeper than that.  Meaning comes from action.  An idea is just an idea until it becomes a physical presence.  For example, I decided to write about this painting.  However, I never really know what I want to say, so I start typing.  Most of the time the sentences are a mess, and vision is a collision of unexpected thoughts.  For some odd reason, writing is sharper than the mind behind it.  If there happens to be an eloquence of sound, it is a compound of labor, a sorting out of sorts, a routine of shaking out shapes from within the instigation.  Inspiration is not that useful.  It is highly unreliable.  It seldom shows up until most of the work is done.  Inspiration is greedy and should never really be trusted.  When the writing finally comes to a conclusion, it feels like taking all the credit, sounding like a pie in the sky job creator.

Although I don’t know anything about music, it was something I always wanted to do.  I like the way it makes me feel.  I guess I am not alone, it does the same for many others.  When I listened to the FIXX, I thought I heard the familiar sounded out in the new.  Often, sudden jarring stiffs seemed to fit.  The music reminded me of collage. The ripping of guitar and the edginess of torn paper seemed to be related.  Listening back on the music now, a lot has changed.  The Cold War is over.  However social isolation remains in check even with the added connections of social media.  With ever present connectedness, the new becomes old in a flash.  Eloquence can quickly be trivialized by a piling on of posts, and I suspect revolution can sound like a round of passive advertising.  Oh my, I’m a Liberal got 37 Likes. 

I liked the music because it wasn’t about sex, drugs or rock and roll.  It was about things like fear and taking a stand.  I often wonder how the young can be so smart.  I don’t really know the lyrics, although I hear them in the sound that moves through my mind.  Less cities, more moving people lyrically stated the pace of industrialization.  What a great chorus line.  Farming became so productive, that smaller communities were no longer self-sufficient.  Less cities meant bigger cities as more and more people moved away from the countryside.  Employment can be a kind of isolation.  Without control, creativity can easily be spent just working to survive.  With no ties to the environment, consumption can tend to become a measure; I spend therefore I am.  However, it provides no connection to the ballad of playground swing.  One legal dose of environment can never compare to being tied to a land of blue skies where crops are dependent upon water.  Unfortunately, many no longer have those connections and live in world where weather was never intended to rain on anyone’s parade.  Because water is always on tap or bottled in plastic, a sense of security is based on a notion of control.  I think that in fact leads to more isolation.  In a world where devices equal connection, what happens when the power goes out or a friend doesn’t respond immediately to a text?  The ability to connect has always come from knowing the power of isolation.  With that, I will let the FIXX close with the song Outside.

One legal dose of environment and The ballad of a playground swing are lines written by Cy Curnin of the FIXX for the song Camphor.

 

Dusk and Construction
charcoal, acrylic, collage, plaster and canvas
33 x 47 1/4 inches
1985