Okay, we haven’t talked about your painting yet, and I wanted to do that because it’s a lot of what you’re known for. Everyone knows your art.
That’s nice to agree with.
It’s true. I mean it’s at Rojo, at Bottletree. All of the hip and interesting places in Birmingham have at least something of yours on their walls.
Me and Brianna were going on a walk last night, in places we probably shouldn’t have, driveways and stuff in these rich neighborhoods, and Brianna wondered whether any of those people had my art hanging on their walls, and I thought, you know, I bet they do because anytime I do Magic City Art Connection and stuff, so many people buy my stuff. And, you know, I don’t walk in people’s houses, but some people say that they could start their own little gallery of my stuff. And most of those people aren’t poor.
Yeah I’ve given a lot of stuff of yours as gifts. My mom has one of your Microbamas that I just gave her for her birthday, and she got so excited and has it hanging in her office now.
Somebody told me something that was funny because they were scared they were going to offend me, but for me, I don’t know, in a strange way, it’s like a personal victory, but they told me they saw one of my pieces in the thrift store, and I was like “Really?! That is awesome!” Because I’m such a thrift store vulture. But I wish I had seen it in the thrift store. Then it made me wish I could have shows in a thrift store. You know, because they have that thrift store art, and it’s just sort of random.
Oh that would be cool. I’m sure you could work something out at like J&J’s Junk Store but it would be even more amazing at some place like America’s Thrift Store.
I would love to do something like that. Can you imagine that? It could start like a whole new trend of art. It would be cool if they said, “You can show here, but all of your found material in it has to be bought from this thrift store."
I think that would be amazing. I’d be there. You need to call up someone at America’s Thrift Store. So, moving on, how has your art evolved? You said that it’s changed a lot from when you first moved to Birmingham.
I think when I first started, I wanted, it sounds really naïve, but I wanted to make folk art, just pure, but unless you’re like some old mountain man that lives in a shack or you know some old black man who doesn’t even own a television set, you can’t really be a folk artist. It’s not one of these things where you can say “Oh I’m going to be a folk artist.” I mean, people like Chris Clark and Lonnie Holley, okay they really are folk artists. But like I said, it was kind of naïve for me to say that, but there were parts of folk art that I like, that I use, and the whole mentality of folk art even today I still use. I paint on found wood. I use house paint. But when I first started I was literally trying to be a folk artist. I don’t know. But there are parts of it that I kept. When I decided I was really going to seriously paint, I had to say to myself, well what style do I want to use? And I’ve always liked, not only Andy Warhol, which really comes through as an influence because I’ve really adopted kind of a pop style, but Robert Rauschenberg, because I’ve always been a big fan of the whole chaos of collage and stuff. Me and Chris Lawson collaborating—I actually got a huge amount of help from that. We would collaborate and then sometimes I would say, god some of these collaborations that we’ve done are better than his stuff by itself and my stuff by itself, and I think, sometimes, collaboration is a good thing and sometimes it can be a bad thing. For me, this wasn’t a bad thing, but I sort of like, I didn’t want to come away with my stuff looking like Chris Lawson’s, but in a sense, I would think, “If I were doing a collaboration with myself,” which is when I realized I liked the whole Robert Rauschenberg collage kind of stuff, and I would just sort of slap stuff together. I wasn’t trying to be Chris Lawson, but then I realized if I sort of painted over that, and did my images over the collage, I could sort of contain the chaos. The collage was the chaos in me and then the image was the order, the stable part of it. It’s a big mixture of that. I think I’m really far removed from where I started because I kept letting that style evolve and evolve and evolve. But with the pop art thing, I think I’ve always wanted to make people laugh at themselves. It’s the same kind of thing with music. I want people to look at themselves and say, my life is in misery but it’s funny at the same time, and a lot of times my art kind of does that. There’s a chaos to it, but also humor.
Like with your Business Beasts? There’s a sense of fun and comedy there, but also horror almost. They’re kind of creepy but also full of bright colors.
That’s some of my newer stuff. Doing that, I feel like, that’s definitely something that causes people to smile when they look at them. I think some of them are disturbing to people, and there is a part of me that wants to disturb people. But. I don’t know. For some reason, talking about my painting is tough. In talking about it, I feel like I’m traveling through my mind, and my mind is kind of like a maze. Because when I start talking about it there’s no cut and dry thing especially right now since I’m doing it all the time. I’ve actually been surviving off of just art for almost eight years now. I used to brag about it, and it’s kind of surreal because the only other ‘official’ job I have is delivering Black & White’s twice a month.
It’s funny right now because my big Obama painting is on the cover. That’s the first time I’ve ever done anything political, well an actual political figure, because a lot of people would say a lot of my stuff is pretty political. I do try to put meaning in it, because a lot of my art is kind of me getting things off my chest, especially when Bush was president. It was a lot more sarcastic, darker, and I did a lot more things with money symbols and devils wearing suits, which I still kind of do, but right now I feel a little less angry about it. About America. But coming out of the Bush years, I still do it, the animals, I could probably do that forever. I get a lot of commissions related to that, people feeling like they identify with a certain animal. But I feel like I’m coming out of the whole angry money thing and going more into painting recycling symbols and Earth-headed people. I always want there to be meaning in my work, and I want my work to speak to people, and I think that’s a part of me that I feel like I haven’t spoken out enough about. I’m really big into recycling. I’m always worrying about global warming, and I have for years. It’s like coming out of the closet in a different way, but you know some people will say “Oh you know, the green thing is so hip right now.” But I say it should stay hip forever. And I hope it does, because it’s kind of funny. If you look at children’s textbooks from the seventies, it was hip then, and it’s so weird, because it just kind of settled down. Like they said “We cared enough about the planet now we can fuck it up again.” But to me, we need to completely change everything to where everything is green.
Yeah I agree. I’m glad that it’s hip now. It needs to be hip. It’s something we have to start doing. So hopefully the hipness will bring people in, and then it will just become routine rather than falling away.
Yeah. I have this fear, though, of five or ten years from now, people seeing this phase of my art and saying “Oh that’s when recycling was popular.” That would be awful. But another reason I am doing it right now, beyond the personal interest in environmentalism, is that at least 85 to 90% is recycled. Found wood, old textbooks, junk mail, and even all of the ink I use is this old computer ink. I have boxes of it that my friend Gary gave me.
But I was really hesitant to take that step and do the painting with just the recycling center in because in the past I never wanted to be in your face about it, and I still kind of don't want to be an activist--like too political. But then another reason is usually most of the stuff in my art up to this point there has been some sort of human thing, though I guess now, looking in hindsight, putting animal heads on human bodies was the beginning of a sort of a departure. But I still think that having humans or at least aspects of human figures or heads or word bubbles – I feel like I need to keep that because that's how people relate to the paintings and that's one of the reasons they smile or they get into them, so sometimes I’ll just put people with recycling symbols or earths for heads.
Yeah that makes sense. So I read on the Naked Art site that you’re colorblind?
Yeah you know it sounds weirder than it really is, but what's funny is for a couple of…I guess years, when I was starting to officially paint, I was under the impression that painting in brighter colors was therapeutic if you were colorblind. I didn't take the test again for a number years, but recently I did and of course I failed miserably. I'm still colorblind. It sounds like somebody sees in black and white but basically I don't make the same distinction between colors as most people. There's really probably a lot more people who are colorblind and just don't know it.
I remember taking the test in seventh grade and the kids were saying 47, 68, and I totally didn't know what the hell was going on. And in some cases they'd say 'if you're colorblind you'll see 20,' and I’d see the 20. But there are different kinds, and I'm red-green.
It's interesting that people think colorblindness means you only see in black and white, but I guess it kind of makes sense.
Yeah, though I do watch a lot of black and white movies. I actually do like black and white films more than color films. And when I do film work and shoot in color, I have a tendency to over saturate it.
But the colorblind thing, I think a lot of the times because of it, and this is what may make a big distinction between my paintings and someone else's, is that I don't really care that much about colors—which colors I use. I've tried to do monochromatic things, but I just get really bored.
I think that's one of the things that even with the different things you've done, you can see the color choices and know that it's your work.
Yeah when I've tried different styles of stuff, I always get worried that people won't be able to tell that it was my stuff, but I think because of that...
Right. With the pieces at Rojo and at Bottletree, though extremely different, everyone can tell it's yours even if it doesn't have a signature.
(laughs) Yeah some people get disappointed with the signature. They say 'can you sign it' and I'll just write 'Paul' and they're like 'is that it?' and I say 'that's it, that's how I sign it, sorry."
Does your sexuality inform your painting in any way?
Ha I knew this would be a question. When you contacted me, I thought that's going to be one. It's funny that's the last question because I didn't know what I was going to say to it.
The answer can be 'no.'
Well, there have been instances. I mean I'm not ever like a raging activist. It took me a long time to get to where I could put even a recycling symbol on something, but I've done some stuff where it sort of seeped into it. It's kind of like my life. I'm gay, but I'm not like wearing it on my sleeve all the time: "Hey I'm Paul, and I'm gay!" I think most people should be like that. I mean that's how most people's sexuality is. My favorite color's green. I like boys. I like grits instead of oatmeal. But that's kind of how I am with painting. Sometimes I'll paint a guy and a girl.
And I admit that when I paint a guy with a guy, I think 'what's a straight person going to think about that?' Because you know a straight person would never paint a gay painting, so in a way it's kind of like, they're just gonna say, ‘that person who painted that is gay.’ But I've never done a whole gay show, and maybe I should. It sounds terrible, but as an artist who survives on his work, I have to say 'Who's going to buy it?' It's silly that I have to think that way, but if I did a whole gay show, it would have to be at a place where mostly a gay audience would be seeing it.
Or a sympathetic audience, which you have in parts of Birmingham.
Yeah. I'm really sensitive about people relating to my work or getting into it. Recycling symbols and animal-headed things anybody can get into that. A three year old can. But I don't want to do too many gay themed paintings. It would relate to some people but then another would say 'That doesn't relate to me.' And it's not like they'd hate my work forever or anything, but I think for the most part I want my work to be universal.
But then I did this show at Bottletree called 'Stolen Faces' and it was another thing where I felt like it was a departure for me, because for a long time most of my work depended on faces and facial expressions, but these were faceless. And there were scenes where there were couples saying things to each other, and I had some that had a guy and a guy, and it was really sarcastic—there was some frustration in that show—but the ones with the guys said "not allowed to love" because there would be some paintings with a big boss man over identical employees, and it said 'not allowed to think.' There were just basically a lot of 'not allowed' things, and with the gay one I felt even straight people could relate to it. And not in the "oh poor gay people" way but maybe these kinds of paintings would give them a glimpse of how it feels when Larry Langford won't let us have gay pride banners and stuff up. It's just like, ehh, you know, we're not slaves, but we're definitely not completely free. But at the same time, most of the time, I don't want the world to be as equal as maybe some other gay people want it to be because some of the things straight people have full reign and freedom out the ass over, it's, like, kind of disgusting what they do in public now, and I feel like, in a way, it's kind of nice to be discreet because you have to be. I don't know. Sometimes it's embarrassing how free straight people are with their sexuality, and it kind of disgusts me. (Pause) I don't really know where I'm going with that thought. (laughs) I don't even know if I answered that question.
No I think you did.
I'm one of those people, maybe because I'm a twin, but I go back and try to imagine you trying to make sense of all the shit I said, and I think 'Oh god, I must be terrible.' Especially when you asked me about painting. I wish there were this encyclopedia that said 'and then he did that.' because when you're the actual person you think 'what did I do?'
