Publicity For Greetings From Ghostland at The Gallery at Black, June 11 - July 16, 2009
Q&A: Michael Raleigh
The Gallery at Black Rock met Michael Raleigh at his studio in Black Rock. Then we asked him about his work and his life.
What is your favorite piece? What does it mean to you? My favorite piece in this show is the painting “Geppetto.” While painting “Geppetto,” a moment came when I stepped back from the unfinished canvas and saw the face of my father staring back at me. I said, “So there you are, old man. That’s where you’ve been hiding all these years.” And then, like a good son wanting to become a real boy, I finished the painting. I’m very often surprised by a finished piece, but this is one of the few times I’ve ever been shocked by my work. The other ghosts in my gallery may exist only in my head, but Geppetto is the real ghost in my family.
What are the major influences on your work? Music is a constant when I paint. A number of the pieces in this show were painted while listening to Tom Waits and Bruce Springsteen. Waits is like an abstract expressionist let loose in the music room of an asylum. Springsteen always reconnects me to the writing inspiration I found when I heard the Born To Run album and realized it was OK to be both a punk and a poet. My primary visual influences come from the abstract expressionists, the figurative expressionist movement, Picasso, Rauschenberg, primitive art from many cultures, and from countless outsider artists, especially the work of the outsider genius Henry Darger.
Why is this show called “Greetings From Ghostland”? I first used that phrase while photographing the Asbury Park, NJ boardwalk ruins in 2001. I thought of the “Greetings From Asbury Park” tourist slogan and decided it should be changed to “Greetings From Ghostland.” That’s how I’ve referred to my visual work since that moment. The photographs from several trips to Asbury Park and Coney Island are the images in “This Is Not A Dark Ride,” one of the photo slideshow videos to be shown at the show opening.
Tell me about yourself. Where are you from? Are you
formally trained? I am a storyteller. Once, I believed that my stories were
told only in words. With words, I have told thousands of stories: Truth and
fiction, poetry and prose, tragedy and comedy. Stories of mask wearers and
ghosts and lost children trying to find their way home by following breadcrumbs
along the trail.
There is a biographical thread to my work. As with all biography, my life is
equal part truth and fiction. In my theater monologue Monkey Boy Bars, performed
during my acting years in Chicago during the 1980’s, I began telling my family’s
story with the words, “My father was an alcoholic who left us.”
I was born in a Cleveland suburb in 1958, but grew up as an Irish Catholic Chicago boy. My immediate family stayed together and survived my father’s abandonment, but his figure always remained our family ghost. I earned my undergraduate and master’s degrees in psychology and business from Northwestern University while doing accounting at large corporations. For years I worked directly across from The Art Museum of Chicago, visiting it dozens of times, but never once considered becoming a visual artist. In the late 1980s, I studied improvisational comedy at Second City, and was a founding member of The Chicago Hysterical Society Improv Troupe. I wrote, produced and acted in cable access television and local theater productions, tried my hand at standup comedy, and wrote poetry, fiction and plays. I even directed and acted at a Renaissance Faire for two summers. Never once in my life did I draw a picture.
When did you first know you would be an artist? In 1998, I moved from Chicago to the NYC metro area to be with my future wife Madeline In 2000, I walked away from my job at Business Week Magazine and a 20 year financial analyst career. I intended to become a full-time writer. A month later, on an extended visit to North Truro, MA, the stories in my head became pictures. One afternoon, as we strolled through the Provincetown Art Museum, I looked up at the walls and saw my stories. I immediately had countless new stories that couldn’t be told with words.
Where else have you shown your work? Since 2002, my work has appeared in dozens of gallery and juried exhibitions, including City Lights Gallery, Starpin Gallery, Flinn Gallery Greenwich, The NEST Arts Factory, Playhouse On The Green, Mystic Art Association, New Jersey Center For Visual Arts, and Boston’s South Shore Art Center. A video presentation of my painted works was shown at Bathhouse Studios NYC. To date, I have completed over 700 pieces. I work primarily in acrylic paint, oil paint, photography and mixed media on canvas, wood, paper, and metal. I’m a self-taught artist. I’m a self-taught writer.
I continue to write. Since moving to Bridgeport in 2006, I write satirical essays and stories under the pseudonym “Mr. Barnum.” I have written for MyLeftNumeg.com and currently write “Mr. Barnum’s Bridgeport To Nowhere” blog on bridgeportinthknow.com. I work as a financial analyst for a media conglomerate in Stamford.
I make pictures. I write words. I tell stories. Greetings from Ghostland
The Gallery at Black Rock, 2861 Fairfield Ave., Black Rock, CT 06605 www.thegalleryatblackrock.com