ARTIST STATEMENT

The other day while sitting at an outdoor café in BedStuy Brooklyn, I saw a little girl in a pinkish-purple dress and a deeper purple scarf walk in with her mother. I thought to myself, She would make a great painting. Then, across the street, an older gentleman in a light gray suit crossed against the red light. “Crossing on Red” that would be the title.

One by one, people passed by, each becoming a moment, a spark, a painting in my mind. I love capturing my people in their environments the funny, the sweet, the poignant. A baby looking back from a stroller, eyeing someone’s ice cream cone. “The Audacity.” That’s the title right there. These glimpses remind me of my own childhood.

I remember my grandmother calling out, “Wash up and go outside and play.” My brother and I roughhousing until something got knocked over and suddenly it was quiet, the kind of silence that follows a broken lamp. Spoiler alert: that silence never helped. It took me years to understand why we had to wash up before heading outside, only to come back covered in mud dirt and creek water.

Our “outside” was a wonderland. My grandparents owned a construction business and had a junkyard in their backyard. When the big machines left for jobs, we had the run of the place. We turned vacuum cleaners into spaceships, roller skates into Jeeps. Wire men rode bikes cobbled together from the bones of everyone else's discarded appliances.  “Don’t bring that junk in the house,” my grandmother would yell. 

 We'd stash our treasures away in clubhouses  made of mismatched plywood and old signs, complete with tin roof carports supported by two-by-fours jammed in paint buckets.  The makeshift garage would house the neighborhood bike,that Frankenstein of a ride built from scavenged parts—wobbled like a drunken jazz solo. You couldn’t go fast, but you looked cool going slow.

Neighbors would peek over fences, drawn in by the clanging, the yelling, the ruckus of our imaginary wars. To the victor, the spoils. But you couldn’t just join in you needed the password. Unless you were a cute girl, maybe then on those rare occasions a smile would do.

We'd wheelie past the grownups, leaning back just a little more if that new girl from down the street was watching. Those moments were electric—like my dad’s old radio in his 1968 Thunderbird, only one speaker worked, but it sounded like an amphitheater. Almost as if you were Backstage at a Miles Davis sound check. Aretha, The Temptations, soul, funk, jazz playing under the hood while I peppered my dad with questions I couldn’t ask in front of my mother. 

Those long summer days. Those cool winter nights. The crisp cool fall mornings waking up at the break of dawn by my father. "Let's go Frank the fish are bitting" my dad would say as I wipe my eyes gently while carefully put my fishing pole in the packed van. These precious moments are what I paint. I am honored to tell the stories of my community through these brushstrokes. These honorable stories of our gestures, our laughter, our soul. Hands on hips. Little girls jumping rope with their mothers. Boys acting up to get a smile and attention from neighborhood , girls jumping rope with their mothers. 

The good times, the fun times, the tough times, the love times. These are our moments, and experiences that I paint. I paint them with pride. 

Be good be great. 

Frank Morrison