RICK GARCIA 11
Running With My Heart''
ts a mean old world, sing the blues folk, and this universe of art is no exception. Times like this, a little inspi ration is requisite, so I get on the horn to the poet in Chi-town who sells paintings and prints between verses. She's so enthusiastic, this energized art publisher. Whether the dogs are barking or the Wolf is howling, for her, the art is everything. She was raving about the facile brilliance ofthe newest addition to her growing family of artistes, and a week or two later, I was hooked up, thanks to Alexander Graham Bell, to Rick Garcia, famous for his striking surreal imagery that had a great run when things were great, back when dinosaurs ruled the earth, I guess it was seven, eight years ago. Rick informed me that he was reading the ads in Art and Antiques and was calling around, mining. He called Golden Pearls, Arica Hilton picked up the phone and Rick tried to remember if any of his prior dealers, reps or agents ever could be reached without fighting through a myriad of managers, secretaries, partners or assorted Punkies. Shortly therea�er, he was on a plane to the Windy City to deliver some paintings and sign some papers. I caught up with him late one Saturday a�ernoon, (or was it a Sunday) as he was getting some work ready in his studio overlook ing the blue waters of Miami Bay.
The Silent Pool (Still Waters), Acrylic on Canvas, 36" x 36"
"He really pai~nted with music. There was some serious color floating around when those songs were playing."
-Rick Garcia on Duane Allman
Rick and his trusty Strat, Clapton-style
Talkin' Blues
BY VICTOR FORBES
painting, always, always painting,
hear about the new one? RG: There's not enough of 'em. VF: Now that's an attitude I should adopt. RG: There's so much on fashion and
Paul Butterfield story? VF: His son has a gig tonight in Manhattan tonight it's his birthday. What about art magazines? Did you
weightlifting. You want to bring some culture into this country. It's just not a hot topic. VF: How can we make it into one? RG: Oh God. Just trying to come up with images that are not too com mon, that make you think a little bit. My paintings are the type of
RICK GARCIA: You're working
today?
VICTOR FORBES: This ain't work... RG: I guess it's like me, always VF: Always editing, always, always editing. I've been listening to your name sake, Jerry. RG: How are you doing on your
works that, when you live with them for a while, you start seeing things that you don't immediately see. I try to give them something to make them crazy so that when they look at these things, they're not just looking at another painting. The only way to make art interesting is to be surreal about it. VF: Who are some of yo,ur favorite artists? RG: In the art world, most every body who is dead. In the modern,
there's not that many who impress me. In music, Eric Clapton, of course. VF: The blues really moves you... RG: Well I certainly lived through it for a momentary time in my life. It's a wild feeling when you can actually experi ence it. I've always been attracted to it. I don't know why.... VF: What is the blues sound to you? RG: It's like when soul music was around, they always tried to figure out what is soul music. It just grabs your insides-you get plugged right in, you feel it, as opposed to hard driving rock. But Beethoven gets me, too. There's something about that music that just taps into you. Takes me and puts me on another level. Your body even bends with the music, your insides, the high and the low, you almost follow it and you can tell what's coming up. I've been a musician for a long, long time. I start ed out playing drums, play guitar also. VF: Lead, rhythm? RG: Both. VF: What kind of guitar do you play? RG: Fender Stratocaster. Just like my idol Clapton, the black and white one. VF:What did you think when he came out with Politician and some of those other tunes and every other line was lifted from Albert King? RG: Yeah, from Wheels of Fire. That song...I never listened to it too much. I'd be a musician definitely if the art world didn't grab a hold of me. I have a song in my head every day, every waking minute. VF: What are you singing right now. Now RG:
Heaven Scent, Acrylic on Canvas and Limited Edition Giclee, 40* x 30*
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that you mentioned it, Politician. VF: "Hey Now Baby, step into my big black car." During the brushfires on Long Island, a few weeks ago, I was working late and went over to our neighbors' place to relax. We were outside, playing some music and pray ing for rain and I wrote a song, Water, which somehow merged with Drip Drop and it sounded pretty good. A few days later, those guys came over here at lunch, and one of our friends was here, Greg Smith, he's an attor ney, a musician, a tennis pro, who was press-cheeking a brochure, and stepped outside and hit that fifth harmony note that really made song sound the way I had envisioned it. I wondered what the neighbors thought when they saw five of us out there-me with the guitar and har monica and we all had our shades on, singing loudly, having fun. It really hurts to have to put a price on creativity. RG: That's for sure. VF: How long have you been an artist, a professional, that is, RG: About ten years. VF: And how old are you now? RG: You gotta put an age in this thing? VF: People want to know. RG: Forty-two. VF: I have to tell you, I'm a big fan of your art. That Absolut ad, and the guitar.... Study for Heaven Scent
Untitled, Acrylic on Canvas, 40 ll x JO"
RG: Which one? VF: The horse pulling back the sky. RG: The terrain, the sand, and exposing the sky below. VF: I think you have the potential to really kick butt in the art market. RG: I think so too. I see very little art out there that's inspiring to me. I used to find art inspiring and I used to find art to help me get my cre ative juices going and then I reached a certain level and I don't see any thing out there anymore (and I don't search it out anymore) that can inspire me to create. The only real creativity I find is in photogra phy and music videos. In the world of painting, which is my thing, there's not much happening-I don't find it in academics, I don't find it creatively. Naive artists are just throwing colors together trying to be as upsetting or disturbing, or violent to people as possible. VF: Let me ask you something, you're a big Clapton fan, right, you just did a painting for a concert he had in Miami-an invitation to his concert... RG: We raised money for a charity. VF: Did you see that Keith Richards movie Hail Hail Rock and Roll? When Clapton came out he totally mesmerized Chuck Berry to the point where Chuck
was prostrating himself before him in praise of the guitar solo Clapton was pro ferring. Clapton was playing this Barney Kessel Gibson, a huge hollow body, and I forget what song... RG: That's what he used the other night, for his blues stuff. He used a ton of guitars the other night... VF: And he just blew Chuck Berry's mind with about twelve bars of notes. Chuck was begging him to play more. Did you see him demolish Keith and Ron Wood when they invited him onstage at Atlantic City for Little Red Rooster? I'm surprised they just didn't drop their . guitars and walk off In ten seconds, Clapton said just about all you need to say. So what kind of music do you play? RG: I get my CD going and I just play the guitar to one of the tons of Clapton songs I have here or the Allman Brothers VF: What's your favorite Clapton song? RG: (long pause) VF: If you had to go some place and take only one song... RG: It would probably be Crossroads. It's just such an insane song, so per fect. The leads are so...that's a song that really grabs me, and I've heard it a million times, and every time it comes, it's like I've heard it for the first time. With:t:, '·'.llman Brothers .,..
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it's Stormy Monday. Nobody has done a better version of that for my taste. Other than the Beatles, everyone I've liked . has always been a blues band. To me, blues is like the Beethoven, or the classical music of the rock and roll world, there's emotion to it, there's feeling to it. Whereas the standard rock music is... VF: It was a sad thing when Duane Allman died. RG: He's another one who was so ridiculously unique. That guy really painted with music. And he was limited with the technology of those days. There was some serious color floating around when those songs were playing. VF: How do your paintings play off this stuff? RG: There's a giant twin hull race boat that my neighbor has across the street. The bay is like a mirror out there, he's gun ning it. Going for a nice ride, I guess... VF: What part of Miami are you in? RG: A place between Miami and Miami Beach-one of four islands, Venetian Island. VF: How is it over there for your creativ ity? RG: I'm surrounded by water, it's very peaceful, only one road comes to this house. I can see the cruise ships leaving, see the seaplanes coming in from the islands, tour boats go by full of tourists pointing out the superstars homes. VF: Are you near Julio Iglesias? RG: He's about five or seven min utes away, up the coast. I'm the equivalent of Seventeenth Street, near Gloria Estefan. VF: How do you like it there? RG: I'm trying to move out, I'd like to live in a safer place if it exists, Hawaii. I was born and raised here, it's time to move along. I saw this town go from a real quiet place to a crazy place. So many things have changed. VF: You have a family going? RG: I've got two step daughters and one five year old. VF: And you want to be on Maui? RG: I don't know if it's Maui, but we've already checked out Kuwaii, I don't know if it will be the big island, but we're looking to get
there. I can't be anywhere north or south of this place, I ing into metal. The water drops were on there, also. need the tropics. Miami is fantastic. VF: What do you think of Michel Roux? VF: So this is where you get your blues from? RG: Besides giving you the typical answer that he's RG: My paintings are definitely, I sometimes use them as amazing and very smart. I'd like to tell you something a psychological self-analysis because things happen in little deeper. I don't know how old he is, but he's like a these paintings without my knowledge, like a composi little kid, a mischievous kid that has something up his tion or a symbol of something. sleeve. But what I liked best about him was that he was VF: Like what? so intent upon giving the world some art to go along with RG: I have to think of some titles... the vodka. No one had thought of giving culture with the VF: How about Heaven Scent, for example? product they were selling. It was always buy this and that RG: What is interesting for me on this painting is that was the end of it. there are water drops on the left side, and the water VF: Did those campaigns kind of put you on the map? drops become pearls floating over the flowers and with RG: In a way. I was getting tons of mail, with tearsheets out even purposely thinking about it, the water floated from the ads and someone actually sent me a pen to sign over the flowers, and I wanted them to turn into the with. Those ads were so popular, now they're like trading birds. Water and air kind of become the same thing, so cards, and kids are collecting them. It was a major plus to the water comes off the wall and turns into golden little have done three things for Absolut. It was a very enjoy able experience. Like in the days when Miami Vice was spheres floating over the flowers, and once I realized they were gold, it was perfect for Arica, 'cause her company is around, this whole city was percolating. Golden Pearls, so that was kind of wild, how they related VF: Did you do anything with that show? to each other. RG: They used to use my paintings on the interiors. That was ten, eleven years ago. What's neat about that show VF: How about that famous Absolut image, with the horse? RG: I put that horse in there lifting up the ground-the is that it's always running somewhere on the earth. A horse was a symbol of Michel Roux, who was in charge of friend of mine was just watching it in Austria, and he had some people over and called me. Absolut at the time, a symbol of power, so I wanted the horse picking up the ground in a way that that would has VF: How would you say your art has evolved from those days? ten the effect of something, so you have the bottle tilting. It was weird because Michel Roux was a The artwork below was donated to the Miracle Roe� XIII, a fund raiser of the ground-breaker and the horse was picking up the StarArt Foundation for the benefit of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. ground, giving it movement. Revealing below the ground there's a sky and the sky was the limit. It was endless, and it is still going on. The horse lifting up the ground was revealing the sky to symbolize infin ity, forever. And there's one fish above the ground. I used to use tropical fish as a vehicle !or symbolism, as Dali used the crutches, I used the fish. I use them in paintings to symbolize loss in people's lives, or for something people are going through. I had some fish in a painting for a poster for a concert that Gloria Estefan did to benefit the victims of Hurricane Andrew. The fish were a symbol for a piece of some one's home-or soul-or something that was missing from the one stable thing in life that people had down in Homestead-their homes. I used the fish to symbolize the mood or experience. Sometimes I have fish that are half-metal and half regular fish, you can see big screws on them, the metamorphosis of how nature is being taken over by industrial waste and technology. Sometimes the fish will be made out of a rubbery substance and the middle part of the body is breaking up into little blobs of oil, just to symbolize a change from one thing to another. Even with Heaven Scent, the water is turning into the golden pearl which is turning into a liquid like substance which becomes the birds going off into heaven. VF: What about that guitar? RG: That was a whim that turned into a major pro ject. I was just looking at one of my guitars and pic tured it as an Absolut bottle. I had the body made and I had the visual picture of that thing in say, Rolling Stone magazine, and I thought it could have been called Absolut Rock and they were going to use Absolut Garcia, but they turned it into Absolut Electric. The fish are guitar picks and the sky is turn-
' RG: For one, the agent I had then was very into my art and I don't know if it was because of the Miami Vice influence, or what, but she had me painting a lot of women with nice juicy red lips mixed in with my sky and the metamorphosis. Now I've pretty much eliminated the faces and it was a slow elimination. The green eyes, the highlights of the red lips, eventually became like a generic face, no longer flesh. Like cutouts of cement wall clouds mixed with mountains, a palm tree that would create the face. Now the paintings are much more... VF: Spiritual? RG: Definitely that and focusing much heavier on technique. These paintings definitely don't come from a traditional 'let me sit down and cross my legs and meditate.' I sit down with a paper, and a pen and without any predetermination I just let my hand and brain come up with an imagery. I don't want to be a machine knocking out paintings to produce income and produce work. They come from an inner place, I don't what it is. I just draw and sketch and that's the exciting part for me. The painting is more labor. I see it in my head already. My problem is I have the imagery in my head-a complete visual color picture of what I want to produce. I'll draw in the car, while I'm waiting in a doctor's office. I don't need any outside influ ences. As long as I can just draw it, that's the total enjoyment. VF: What do you do with these sketches? RG: Sometimes I don't even com plete them. Doodles, far from being sketches, but I see them as done. Conceived right here on this piece of paper. VF: What have been some of the high lights of your career. When did you real ly take off as an artist? RG: Really, about ten years ago, I started getting calls from all over the place. I was showing with Scott Hansen and it was fabulous, until he ran out of money. But my paintings were there with the Warhols and Kostabis, Peter Max, Sylvester Stallone. VF: Were they selling them as fast as you could paint them? RG: Faster. They'd be calling me all the ti,me for more. People were even asking the gallery to have me to paint specific things in my work. My agent at the time was living out there and
every Wednesday from her gallery they shot a · show called Hollywood Insider and every star they interviewed was being inter viewed right in front of my paintings. So I was on Vice, I was on that show, I was get ting into fashion magazines that were using a giant mural I did here in Miami. The Japanese were using it also. The mural was on the side of a building, 30' x 60', which I did for Miami Vice. On a Friday eve-ning, they took me to a building and said this is what we need painted. Everybody took off, the art director, everybody. I went out and bought paint and that day it was over cast with a mist in the air. I painted the entire side of the building blue and the next day I came back and the entire three floors thirty feet high by sixty feet wide of blue paint was entirely off the wall, down the side walk and into the sewers. It rained that night. All the paint, not half of it, not ten percent. Man, that was incredible. The very next day was blazing hot and that paint was drying the minute I rolled it on. Not even thirty seconds went by. I laid out the entire drawing on the side of the building with a grid and in a week, with the help of a motorized scaffold, I was finished. It took me almost a week to complete and it was on screen for about thirty seconds. What was really incredible is that I finished at midnight on Sunday and at eight on Monday there were eighteen wheelers there, cameras, actors, everything, ready to shoot. Nobody even wanted to ask what I was going to do. They just gave me the money and told me to paint. VF: That sounds like Arica today. RG: She's saying just go ahead and do it, also. VF: How do you compare her to the dealers of the eighties?
RG: Of the ones I've had, she's a gem. Definitely a golden pearl. She gets so involved with the imagery and the creativity. She gives it a lot of attention, as opposed to what I was accustomed to dealing with when they told me to give them some paintings and I never had any feedback. These paintings are defi nitely a part of me and a little bit of your soul is going up for sale, and she feels the same way about them. VF: So what's your next move? RG: Other than come up with paint ings we can produce into limited editions, it is to just keep growing. The imagery is what is interesting to me right now. I've eliminated cer tain subject matters that I've used for a long time and I'm going into a new dimension. I feel these works have much more soul, more guts. The work I used to do in the past was surreal all the way. You'd look at it and wonder why. Things were coming out of things, were changing into things. Now that is still happen ing, but in a much more elegant way, more subdued. I was running with my brain then. Now I'm run ning with my heart.