by Brian Griffith.
My brother Dave died recently, and as he was an artist whose paintings were featured twice in EAP, I’m giving a tribute to him here. A few of his paintings from different stages of his life can illustrate how his concerns evolved over time. Three of the paintings are followed by brief comments he wrote to explain them. I’ll start with his own self-introduction, quoted from his art book Struggling in Place:
“I started out a little recklessly, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes or marijuana from when I was 13. When I was 15, I started shooting hard drugs. I used to hitch hike around town, not going anywhere in particular. Sometimes I’d end up at parties. There used to be Goodwill drop-off boxes around town. You could crawl into them and sleep on the used clothes. I used to love waking up and not knowing where I was. I was a floor-layer for 30 years, a nurse for 20 years, and now I’m an artist. I’ve lived in nice suburbs, inner cities, apartment complexes, a mechanic garage, a sail boat, and a truck. I paint what I see in the world around me.”
As a teen-age suburban party animal, Dave couldn’t give a rat’s ass about schoolwork. He just cared about people, and sensed there was something wrong with how they relate. In his high school art class, he put it this way:
He dropped out of college and started working as a carpet layer, which in the 70s and 80s was surprisingly profitable. It was often back-breaking labor, but the work crews seemed to never stop joking, and Dave was normally hilarious. The work teams also normally included undocumented migrants, who were subject to police raids and deportations. He did a painting about it with an explanation:
Welcome to Gringoland
“Immigration gets demonized in periods throughout history. When I was young, the majority of the immigrants were from Mexico. Everyone called them “Mexicans.” One time I was working on a new construction apartment project laying carpet, when the border patrol pulled in with about five trucks. Everyone took off running out the back doors. A bunch of us ended up in some nearby woods. We were all huffing and puffing from running, when one of the guys yelled “What are you running from gringo?” I was the first one to venture back onto the job site to check if the cops were gone yet, because I was a gringo. Around a dozen painters and some roofers were gone. They had all been trapped up on scaffolding and rooftops when the cops pulled in. The cost to those arrested and their families was horrific.”
Dave got married and had three daughters. Then the carpeting business collapsed, he went broke, and his wife threw him out. He moved into a car repair garage and did odd carpeting jobs, with most of the money reserved for child support. His paintings increasingly featured the working poor:
Last Resort
“There’s a building in Corpus Christi that houses three businesses: a payday loan, a day labor, and a check cashing place. Everyone who goes to any of them gets screwed. The less money you have, the more expensive everything is. Every time I would drive past, I would yell out the window “It’s the Fuck You building!” There are multiple “fuck you” buildings across America.”
Finally he gave up on carpeting, went back to school, and became a nurse. In that career he mostly served out-patients, many of whom were homeless. He would find them and give them the care they needed in the streets. That led to paintings about those people:
Out of Sight Out of Mind
“In 2002, the Austin city government passed a resolution to clear out homeless camps. Basically, all this accomplished was to run them into woods. I had a homeless patient who was a heroin addict. I would stay in touch with her by calling on my cell phone. She would tell me where she was, and I would meet her there. One time I was at a bus stop doing wound care on her when the cops showed up. They told me that somebody had called to report that there was a lady there who had been stabbed, and some man was sewing her up. Property owners are concerned about their property values, and in our society, the owners’ rights outweigh human rights.”
As his parents grew old, Dave was the son who stayed in their town and helped them as best he could. As his own health deteriorated, he focused on painting and produced a book showing much of his work, called Struggling in Place: The Art of David Griffith, published by Lulu.com. All his life he despised mainstream religion as he knew it in Texas, because he assumed it was the opposite of compassion.