New acquisition

Yesterday I got to drive out to the studio/home of EK Huckaby for the express purpose of being gifted a painting by this talented man.

I first met EK nearly ten years ago, when I was getting ready to go to my first Alchemy. I had been to a couple of meet-and-greets in Atlanta and met several burners, and I had started making connections in the various Facebook groups. At some point, EK invited all the hippies to come to his exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, and so we went.

We were all smitten by his work, and at some point in the next year or two I invited him to camp with 3 Old Men, which he has done ever since.

As you can see if you click through to the MOCA-GA exhibit, EK is a dynamo of styles and materials. You get the sense that he’s the ultimate Lichtenbergian: if there’s even a tiny roadblock in the completion of a piece, his mind simply switches to another, different work and keeps going. His house and property are literally covered with work or raw materials waiting to be used.

He gave me carte blanche to pick any of his paintings in the house, but as it happened it turned out to be an easy choice:

If you click through to EK’s exhibit page and scroll down to the panoramic views of the exhibit, check out the middle one. My painting is there next to the skeleton painting. It struck me then, and it struck me the moment I saw it in EK’s house. It was in fact the first painting I saw, and although we rummaged through the rest of the house I knew this was the work I was going home with.

The fluidity of the media — resins and lacquers — resists rigidity, yet somehow solidifies into very familiar objects — books — and still… we see the books from an unusual angle, as if someone has walked through the library and turned all the books around. The tensions between the goopiness of the medium and the precise, hard edges of the subject are what delight me.

EK at the march from the dark side, alchemy 2022

EK and I had started talking about my visiting his place months ago; I had initiated the idea, since I wanted to buy one of EK’s paintings. He immediately countered by saying he would give one to me. For that, I am surprised and grateful.

Now to find a place to hang it…