I need a drink

What a fucking shitty day of painting. I've been working on a portrait for a week and got so frustrated with it I pulled it off the wall and ripped it to shreds. Fuck off, art.

New Art - Out of Bondage

Alright, time to go on another creative streak again. This spring is starting to heat up for me with a few projects on the horizon as well as a list of paintings in my head that need to get out. The first one up is yet another sub-set of the Plantation Series titled the 'out of bondage' series. I was looking at some images online at the Library of Congress from the civil war and reconstruction era and was amazed at some of the pictures of slaves and freedmen. I downloaded a few out and composed them in a series of compositions that  is meant to show the strength and enduring legacy of a people that were historically marginalized for centuries but somehow endured their hardship and thrived through adversity. There will be no usual Quashie styled political antics associated with these paintings - the images speak for themselves. The first painting is that of Richard Toler, a Virginia slave freed by the emancipation proclamation. In the original image he was standing on a street corner but I moved him to a rural setting.

Out of Bondage 1 (Richard Toler)

52" x 69"

oil on canvas

(select to view larger)

Richard Toler was born near Lynchburg in Campbell County, Virginia. He was the son of George Washington Toler and Lucy Toler, and the slave of Henry Toler. As a youngster, Richard Toler tended to the cows and calves on his master’s 500-acre farm; later, he hoed in the fields. He learned blacksmithing as a slave, and after emancipation he earned his living as a smith for 36 years. After the Civil War he bought a fiddle, and became an accomplished musician, playing for white dances and at hoe downs. He recalls medical treatment under slavery, as well as details of diet and clothing. He also recalls the brutal whipping of young girls by his master’s sons.

“Ah never fit in de wah; no suh, ah couldn’t. Mah belly’s been broke! But ah sho’ did want to, and ah went up to be examined, but they didn’t receive me on account of mah broken stomach. But ah sho’ tried, ’cause ah wanted to be free. Ah didn’t like to be no slave. Dat wasn’t good times.”

“Ah never had no good times till ah was free”, the old man continued. “Ah was bo’n on Mastah Tolah’s (Henry Toler) plantation down in ole V’ginia, near Lynchburg in Campbell County. Mah pappy was a slave befo’ me, and mah mammy, too. His name was George Washington Tolah, and her’n was Lucy Tolah. We took ouah name from ouah ownah, and we lived in a cabin way back of the big house, me and mah pappy and mammy and two brothahs.

”They nevah mistreated me, neithah. They’s a whipping the slaves all the time, but ah run away all the time. And I jus’ tell them – if they whipped me, ah’d kill ‘em, and ah nevah did get a whippin’. If ah thought one was comin’ to me, Ah’d hide in the woods; then they’d send aftah me and they say, ‘Come, on back, – we won’t whip you’. But they killed some of the niggahs, whipped ‘em to death. Ah guess they killed three or fo’ on Tolah’s place while ah was there.

“Ah never went to school. Learned to read and write my name after ah was free in night school, but they nevah allowed us to have a book in ouah hand, and we couldn’t have no money neither. If we had money we had to tu’n it ovah to ouah ownah. Chu’ch was not allowed in ouah pa’t neithah. Ah go to the Meth’dist Chu’ch now, everybody ought to go. I think religion must be fine, 'cause God Almighty's at the head of it."

Toler took a small piece of ice from the lard can, popped it between his toothless gum, smacking enjoyment, swished at the swarming flies with a soiled rag handkerchief, and continued.

“Ah nevah could unnerstand about ghos’es. Nevah did see one. Lots of folks tell about seein’ ghos’es, but ah nevah feared ‘em. Ah was nevah raised up undah such supastitious believin’s.

“We was nevah allowed no pa’ties, and when they had goin’ ons at the big house, we had to clear out. Ah had to wo’k hard all the time every day in the week. Had to min’ the cows and calves, and when ah got older ah had to hoe in the field. Mastah Tolah had about 500 acres, so they tell me, and he had a lot of cows and ho’ses and oxens, and he was a big fa’mer. Ah’ve done about evahthing in mah life, blacksmith and stone mason, ca’penter, evahthing but brick-layin’. Ah was a blacksmith heah fo’ 36 yea’s. Learned it down at Tolah’s.

“Ah stayed on the plantation during the wah, and jes’ did what they tol’ me. Ah was 21 then. And ah walked 50 mile to vote for Gen’l Grant at Vaughn’s precinct. Ah voted fo’ him in two sessions, he run twice. And ah was 21 the fust time, cause they come and got me, and say, ‘Come on now. You can vote now, you is 21.’ And theah now – mah age is right theah. ‘Bout as close as you can git it. “Ah was close to the battle front, and I seen all dem famous men. Seen Gen’l Lee, and Grant, and Abe Lincoln. Seen John Brown, and seen the seven men that was hung with him, but we wasn’t allowed to talk to any of ‘em, jes’ looked on in the street. Jes’ spoke, and say ‘How d’ do.

“But ah did talk to Lincoln, and ah tol’ him ah wanted to be free, and he was a fine man, ’cause he made us all free. And ah got a ole history, it’s the Sanford American History, and was published in 1784. But ah don’t know where it is now, ah misplaced it. It is printed in the book, something ah said, now written by hand. And it says, ‘Ah am a ole slave which has suvved fo’ 21 yeahs, and ah would be quite pleased if you could help us to be free. We thank you very much. Ah trust that some day ah can do you the same privilege that you are doing for me. Ah have been a slave for many years.

“Aftah the wah, ah came to Cincinnati, and was married three times. Mah fust wife was Mannie. Then there was Mollie. They both died, and then ah was married Cora heah, and ah had six child’en, one girl and fo’ boys. They’s two living yet; James is 70 and he is not married. And Bob’s about thutty or fo’ty. Ah done lost all mah rememb’ance, too ole now. But Mollie died when he was bo’n, and he is crazy. He is out of Longview (Home for Mentally infirm) now fo’ a while, and he jes’ wanders around, and wo’ks a little. He ha’mless, he wouldn’t hurt nobody. He ain’t married neithah.<

“After the wah, ah bought a fiddle, and ah was a good fiddlah. Used to be a fiddlah fo’ the white girls to dance. Jes’ picked it up. It was a natural gif’. Ah could still play if ah had a fiddle. Ah used to play at our hoe downs, too. Played all those ole time songs – Soldier’s Joy, Jimmy Long Josey, Arkansas Traveler, and Black Eye Susie. Ah remembah the wo’ds to that one.”

Smiling inwardly with pleasure as he again lived the past, the old Negro swayed and recited:

Black Eye Susie, you look so fine,

Black Eye Susie, ah think youah mine.
A wondahful time we’re having now,
Oh, Black Eye Susie, ah believe that youah mine.

And away down we stomp aroun’ the bush,
We’d think that we’d get back to wheah we could push
Black Eye Susie, ah think youah fine,
Black Eye Susie, Ah know youah mine.

Then, he resumed his conversational tone:

“Befo’ the wah we never had no good times. They took good care of us, though. As pa’taculah with slave as with the stock – that was their money, you know. And if we claimed bein’ sick, they’d give us a dose of castah oil and tu’pentine. That was the principal medicine cullud folks had to take, and sometimes salts. But nevah no whiskey – that was not allowed. And if we was real sick, they had the Doctah fo’ us.

“We had very bad eatin’. Bread, meat, water. And they fed it to us in a trough, jes’ like the hogs. And ah went in may [sic] shirt till I was 16, nevah had no clothes. And the flo’ in ouah cabin was dirt, and at night we’d jes’ take a blanket and lay down on the flo’. The dog was supe’ior to us; they would take him in the house.

“Some of the people I belonged to was in the Klu Klux Klan. Tolah had fo’ girls and fo’ boys. Some of those boys belonged. And I used to see them turn out. They went ’round whippin’ niggahs. They get young girls and strip ‘em sta’k naked, and put ‘em across barrels, and whip ‘em till the blood run out of ‘em, and then they would put salt in the raw pahts. And ah seen it, and it was as bloody aroun’ em as if they’d stuck hogs.

“I sho’ is glad I ain’t no slave no moah. Ah thank God that ah lived to pas the yeahs until the day of 1937. Ah’m happy and satisfied now, and ah hopes ah see a million yeahs to come.”

Source: The American Slave, Vol. 16: 97-101.

More Approved Plantation Colors

This is the companion piece to the other Plantation Palette. It speaks for itself.

Plantation Palette - Savoury

44" x 63"

Acrylic and gel on Canvas

The Plantation Approved Colors

As promised, here is the first piece of the new year. The Plantation series continues with the approved color palette(s). I have about 4 of these planned (so far) with two completed. I'll upload the other one later on in the week. This one obviously deals with the relations (many forced) slaveowners had with their slaves. As slaves were the property of the plantation owner, the rape of a black woman by whites was not considered a crime. First-generation children of mixed race were called mulattoes.

Plantation Palette (Sensual)

63" x 44"

Acrylic and gel transfer 

The following passages were taken from the critical essay "The Tragic Mulatto Myth" by Dr. David Pilgrim. To read the full essay, click here.

E.B. Reuter, an historian, wrote:

In slavery days, they (Mulattoes) were most frequently the trained servants and had the advantages of daily contact with cultured men and women. Many of them were free and so enjoyed whatever advantages went with that superior status. They were considered by the white people to be superior in intelligence to the black Negroes, and came to take great pride in the fact of their white blood....When possible, they formed a sort of mixed-blood caste and held themselves aloof from the black Negroes and the slaves of lower status.

Reuter's claim that mulattoes were held in higher regard and treated better than "pure Blacks" must be examined closely. American slavery lasted for more than two centuries; therefore, it is difficult to generalize about the institution. The interactions between slaveholder and slaves varied across decades--and from plantation to plantation. Nevertheless, there are clues regarding the status of mulattoes. In a variety of public statements and laws, the offspring of White-Black sexual relations were referred to as "mongrels" or "spurious." Also, these interracial children were always legally defined as pure Blacks, which was different from how they were handled in other New World countries. A slaveholder claimed that there was "not an old plantation in which the grandchildren of the owner [therefore mulattos] are not whipped in the field by his overseer." Further, it seems that mulatto women were sometimes targeted for sexual abuse. 

According to the historian J. C. Furnas, in some slave markets, mulattoes and quadroons brought higher prices, because of their use as sexual objects. Some slavers found dark skin vulgar and repulsive. The mulatto approximated the White ideal of female attractiveness. All slave women were vulnerable to being raped, but the mulatto afforded the slave owner the opportunity to rape, with impunity, a woman who was physically White (or near-White) but legally Black.

The mulatto woman was depicted as a seductress whose beauty drove White men to rape her. This is an obvious and flawed attempt to reconcile the prohibitions against miscegenation (interracial sexual relations) with the reality that Whites routinely used Blacks as sexual objects. One slaver noted, "There is not a likely looking girl in this State that is not the concubine of a White man...." Every mulatto was proof that the color line had been crossed. In this regard, mulattoes were symbols of rape and concubinage. Gary B. Nash summarized the slavery-era relationship between the rape of Black women, the handling of mulattoes, and White dominance:

Though skin color came to assume importance through generations of association with slavery, white colonists developed few qualms about intimate contact with black women. But raising the social status of those who labored at the bottom of society and who were defined as abysmally inferior was a matter of serious concern. It was resolved by insuring that the mulatto would not occupy a position midway between white and black. Any black blood classified a person as black; and to be black was to be a slave.... By prohibiting racial intermarriage, winking at interracial sex, and defining all mixed offspring as black, white society found the ideal answer to its labor needs, its extracurricular and inadmissible sexual desires, its compulsion to maintain its culture purebred, and the problem of maintaining, at least in theory, absolute social control.

George M. Fredrickson, author of The Black Image in the White Mind, claimed that many White Americans believed that mulattoes were a degenerate race because they had "White blood" which made them ambitious and power hungry combined with "Black blood" which made them animalistic and savage. The attributing of personality and morality traits to "blood" seems foolish today, but it was taken seriously in the past. Charles Carroll, author of The Negro a Beast (1900), described Blacks as apelike. Regarding mulattoes, the offspring of "unnatural relationships," they did not have "the right to live," because, Carroll said, they were the majority of rapists and killers. His claim was untrue but widely believed. In 1899 a southern White woman, L. H. Harris, wrote to the editor of the Independent that the "negro brute" who rapes White women was "nearly always a mulatto," with "enough white blood in him to replace native humility and cowardice with Caucasian audacity." Mulatto women were depicted as emotionally troubled seducers and mulatto men as power hungry criminals. Nowhere are these depictions more evident than in D. W. Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation (1915).

Back in the Saddle Again!

Been a long time, but I can assure you that the work and the posts are back. I rented the studio again and had to do some work in there to get it up to speed to start the creative process moving along. I had no need for a 50 foot wall so the space has been partitioned to create a pseudo gallery and a work / storage area. I'm still in the process of moving all of the work in there but am in no real hurry...it will accumulate over the next couple months - besides, I need something on my walls at home!

I've been feeling the itch and wanted to get back into it slowly. I actually finished two paintings this morning and will post them as soon as Rick Rhodes finishes photographing them. I will start on another early next week and will try to have that one done by the week's end. I'm still working on the Plantation series and the ideas are bursting forth so you know what that means - foolishness will ensure at a torrid pace. I have a feeling that this will be my most productive year ever and I have a list of stuff that I intend to to attack ferociously. So, if you are in the area, feel free to stop by - it will be my de facto home.

And the winner is....

During my last exhibition titled 'Subjective Perception' at the Ponder Fine Arts Gallery on the campus of Benedict College in Columbia, SC, I posed a question on my interactive 'painting' the 'Blackbored'. 

"Blackbored - Racialebra'

I posted a sign stating that any student who answered the question the most correctly would win a signed and framed poster of a piece of art. After reading half a dozen responses, the most correct was submitted by  Kennan Hutson.

"The noun 'nigger' is one of the most unique nouns I've known because it is more

than a title. The noun 'nigger' is a state of being, a mindset and a way of living,

a culture. At one point in time 'nigger' was defined as an ignorant person but now

many things have been attached. 'Nigger' has developed its own color, even entity,

and can only be determined by one's own perspective. Based on our society, to say

the word 'nigger' is immoral, but to kill one is tolerated. There is only one answer;

A 'nigger' is as valuable as it's influence. It is as powerful as the mind of its adversary

and is as helpful to a society as the weakest star in the midnight sky."

Well stated, my man. See America, there is a depth of knowledge and solemn contemplation on the part of our youth. Challenge them and they will rise! The real answer resides in Kennan's statement that it is immoral to say the word 'nigger' but killing one is tolerated. In today's politically correct society, we have placed greater value on words that on actual lives. This conundrum reminds me of the children's rhyme, 'Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." Not these days. In our 24-hour  sound byte obsessed media market, where outrage is manufactured and manipulated to drive ratings to an audience that no longer cares to think for itself and has ceded moral authority to talking heads and pundits that have carved up and aim their subjective opinion (not objective journalism) at demographics that only fit their political ideology, its no wonder that the value of a human life has been eroded to the point that it now matches our limited attention spans. Kennan's right, the value of words lies in their power to influence. 

SERVICE is now on Quashie website

Hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday. I'm using the downtime to catch up with some work. I always wanted to have a single page on my site that showed the entire "Service" painting along with the bio's and events depicted in the entire piece. I'm finally on my way to doing just that and just launched the page. 

Now all you have to do is scroll the cursor over the faces and the shortened bios will pop up underneath. I'll be adding more info on each in the future as well as links to other sites that have far more info than I do on the individuals and events depicted. Select this link to view the page.

Since so many asked....

I have gotten many requests for posters of 'NUTS'. So here they are in two sizes - 16" x 20" and 20" x 30". Anyone who wants to order select the link below.

POSTER STORE

16" x 20"

20" x 30"

New Art - J. CROW Apparel Advertisements

Sorry about the disappearing act. As many of you know, I used to do some writing in Hollywood and they came calling again. There was some interest in a screenplay that I had written as well as pilot to a sit-com. I needed to take the time to do a polish on both and send them out to La-La land. Hopefully they will interest a few notable people and who knows, they may actually make it to the big and small screen, respectively - but I seriously doubt it. The odds are tremendously long for any such thing happening but you have to roll the dice and get it out there. After all, they won't get there if you write them. We'll see what happens.

In the meantime, back to the art. I finished a couple more pieces of the Plantation series - the somewhat misguided ad campaign for the equally misguided Jim Crow Apparel clothing line. I'm having so much fun with these.

This will be the last post until next year. I have some really nice work planned. I'm off to Florida to hang out with mom for Christmas. have a great holiday and please be safe if traveling!

J. CROW APPAREL - Branding Irony

acrylic and gel on birch panel

36" x 48"

J. CROW APPAREL - Stripes

acrylic and gel on birch panel

36" x 48"

Shameless Christmas Plug!

Want a great Christmas gift? How about a decent book? I wrote this last year and am working on a sequel (while the paint dries).

CLICK HERE TO ORDER