Taking their art to the people, live painters are emerging as one of the more accessible and entertaining facets of our music scene, blending art and music, capturing rhythm and energy on canvas. Right before our eyes, live painters offer eye candy and inspiration for art and music lovers alike.
Glide caught up with two dynamic Live Painters, Phil Cheney and Tovah Jacobson, about their onstage creation celebration.
What’s the Dynamic Art Gallerie?
Phil: The Dynamic Art Gallerie was the original Traveling Art Show that displayed large, colorful paintings during performances of the Snake Oil Medicine Show. I began painting live with the Snakes in August, 1997, at the one and only SOMS Festival "Jehosaphest.” In 1998, I became the Curator of the DAG. At first, I was just the Celebrity Guest Host but after a while, the position became permanent. Nowadays, while Snake Oil has been on hiatus, I have been trying to reinvent the Dynamic Art Gallerie. It serves as an online art gallery, and has for several years but I also have a plan of making it a traveling art gallery again, one that goes to festivals and displays art for people to see and interact with. We did a prototype version out at Burning Man last year and the wind really crushed us. This year we’ll be taking a much sturdier tent. We will have our first event of this year at the French Broad River Festival in Hot Springs, NC in early May.
The Dynamic Art Gallerie, is however, not just about my art. For the past four years I have been teaming up with an incredible performance artist and painter, named Tovah Jacobson. She and I will be collaborating LIVE during the upcoming Everyone Orchestra tour of the Southeast and I am really looking forward to that. I have also done several live collaborations with speed-painter extraordinaire, Scramble Campbell. So, the Dynamic Art Gallerie is an art gallery, it exists in cyberspace and soon will be a movable experience to be enjoyed at festivals and other events – including possible Snake Oil Medicine Show reunions, and it is also a vehicle for promoting our art and all of our wonderfully talented friends and family. In the Dynamic Art Gallerie, we promote freedom and peace, as well as LOVE and we believe that ART is human creativity, period. By combining visual art with music, we open up the possibilities, we expose a whole new audience to the process of creating art. Music offers us a portal between pure creative energy and those who are willing to channel it!
In live settings, how does the music and crowd influence what comes out on canvas?
Tovah: I feel as if I’m the medium for a greater spirit. The energy guides my hand and what appears is vibrant forms on my canvas. At a show, the greater spirit that guides me is the amalgamation of all the people who are living and celebrating the same thing.
Phil: The music opens up the doors of creativity and lets you connect with it very easily; you can interface with the Creative Force of the Universe. So, it becomes meditational. Often times, I forget where I am.
How do the paintings you do in your studio differ from what you create onstage?
Phil: They don’t differ because the kind of painting I do on stage is what I do in the studio. The performance is the creation of the piece.
Tovah: What I paint on stage is the experience between the musicians and the audience. In my studio, I interpret my life and my interaction of the world.
Describe what you’re thinking when you’re painting onstage.
Phil: All kinds of different thoughts, like the various parameters of the painting I’m working on or something someone said over the PA between songs is echoing in my brain. I also like to sing along off-key in my head.
Tovah: Usually I’m not thinking anything, I’m just experiencing it and watching the images appear before me., like a magic lantern. But when I take a moment to step back and see what’s going on, then, I think "Whoa."
If you could wake up tomorrow in the body of another artist, for one day, whom would you choose?
Tovah: Bob 7
Phil: I think I’d choose Paul Gauguin so I could go to Tahiti to paint some of those Polynesian women!
How do you see your artwork evolving within the next five years?
Phil: Next five years?! Oh yes, I really want to do big, big things. I want to do not only two but three dimensional work and large sculptures using light.
Tovah: Amazingly
Who are some of the dream musicians you’d like to live paint with?
Tovah: So, so many! Ravi Shankar, Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, The Royal Rascals, Kermit the Frog, Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Rusted Root, Bodega, and Ras Alan. Just to name a few.
Phil: Kongar-ol Ondar and Paul Pena, R.Crumb, The Mad Tea Party, Les Primitifs du Futur, Quintette du Hot Club de France, Slim and Slam, Hypnotic Clambake and the New Calendonia Men’s Choir.
Anything else you’d like to share?
Phil: Yes, my art.
Tovah: People often say that they’re not artistic or cannot paint. To them I say you are artistic and you can create. Take life for example. Living in itself is pure art. Take your time, find your joy. The expression of love and happiness is the highest of all forms of beauty.
Check out the Dynamic Art Gallery and Phil and Tovah’s Creations here
