Vagabond of the Internet

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My paintings of the homeless and street people began in New York City, where they can be seen sleeping or, for whatever reason, laying on the sidewalk. It leaves an impression on one's memory. It wasn't even necessary to work from reference photos or sketches. I was still able to see them, in my mind's eye, in the privacy and comfort of home. The images doggedly persist.

Sketching pitiful bundles of flesh and bone wrapped in rags just felt natural to me. I made a series of sketches, which I intended to submit to galleries, including a design for a 3-dimensional piece, consisting of a black plastic leaf bag stuffed with wadded paper, and tied in such a way as to look like a figure. It would be tossed, like a rag doll, on the gallery floor. The show was to feature a selection from a series of 20-30 oil paintings of modest-size, on canvas, of images of prostrate bums. 

They were to be simplified, a solitary figure on a monolithic ground, in neutral colors and black and white. Conceptually aesthetic, trimmed of tasteless details normally seen on real bums. While the subject was socially conscious, the object, ultimately, was art. My intention was an idealistic representation, contrasting with the depressing realism of the subject. It was a contrarian strategy, meant to lessen the objectionable aspect of the subject by means of abstraction, analogous to the way an oyster forms a pearl from a grain of sand.

Ironically, the strategy was so effective, I dropped it altogether, as if cured. A problem came and went. At the same time, in the back of my mind, I didn't believe the whole matter had come to an end. I filed the folio of sketches and notes for the series in the drawer. Twenty years later, after an inconclusive foray into non-objective abstraction, I felt again the need to draw. It had to be robust drawing, bold,  blackest black, not a wire-like gray pencil or pen line, or brittle charcoal; but with carbon crayon -stout, coarse, dirty. That brought to mind, again, the bum series.

The difference this time was that I resolved not to try to polish a lump of coal, but to take a second look at the life of the gutter from an artist's point of view - without effete distinctions of taste - but, rather, objectively, realistically. Additionally, in the meantime, the Internet had opened up a horizon of possible subjects beyond the poor wretches seen in passing on the sidewalk. Homelessness is world-wide. Sharing the same perceptions as everybody else, it became a true subject, not a personal pique.

The graphic art of Brian Higgins can be viewed at: https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/8-brian-higgins
One-of-a-kind works of art can be viewed at: https://www.saatchiart.com/account/artworks/1840403

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