Charcoal Drawings_Old Time Songs & Stories

Painting and drawing are my calling, my vocation, my pastime, my joy of existence. A close second is Old Time music and the banjo. Since taking up the banjo and Old Time in 2014, I have interwoven the two in my paintings.

As soon as I started playing, I read extensively about "America's" instrument. Well, it's actually a "Caribbean" instrument, having been invented and played by enslaved Black Caribbeans of the 17thc. They took it with them to North America after being "seasoned" in the tropics and resold to slavers in the United States. According to the historical record, whites started playing the banjo in the 1830s. The banjo was as ubiquitous and influential in 19thc. popular music as the electric guitar was in 20thc. popular music. Unlike the electric guitar/rock-and-roll relationship, the banjo has been associated with 19thc. Minstrelsy and by extension, white oppression. Thus, I discovered that the banjo has had a very checkered and complex past.

Old Time music originates from the Upland South, where I call home. Not until the late 1970s and 1980s did people consider and honor the black contributions to this music. I cherish these contributions and Old Time's unique combination of African and European sounds. My "Old Time Time Songs and Stories" paintings and drawings explore this diverse and complicated slice of Americana.

I'd like to end this statement with a quote that seems to apply to me. I happened upon it years after I started playing the banjo and painting about Old Time music. It's from the Italian Neoplatonist Philosopher Ficino, from his "On the Threefold Life," 1489. Apparently, it also meant something to the great painter and printmaker Albrecht Durer because it's in his notes about his very famous deeply introspective, print "Melencolia I."

"A boy who practices painting too much may be overcome by melancholy. He should learn to play string instruments and thus be distracted to cheer his blood."