Ken Post's Tony song

TONY MAFIA

HE WAS PAINTING                      

ON THE STREETS OF PARIS 

HENRI MATISSE PASSED HIS 

WAY IF YOU KEEP ON PAINTING 

LIKE THAT YOU LL BECOME A 

MASTER ONE DAY

AND HE DID BECOME A MASTER 

BUT  YOU ’ VE NEVER HEARD HIS

NAME HE MUST HAVE BEEN BORN

UNDER AN OBSCURE STAR

 BECAUSE THAT IS WHERE HE 

STAYED

WIH THE INTENSITY OF   A 

TOREADOR POISED WITH 

PALETTE AND BRUSH  DANCING 

IN FRONT OF THE CANVAS 

PAINTING WITH A LUSH TOUCH

MIGHT BE A LYRICAL PORTRAIT 

OR A COMPLEX STORY              

ONE DAY HE SPUN AROUND     

AND HE TOLD ANNMARIE 

REMEMBER ME 

BY MY BRUSH STROKES

HE LOVED A ROLLICKING DIRTY 

DITTY AND A PASSIONATE 

SPANISH STRUM 

IF YOU TOLD HIM

YOU LIKED HIS SHIRT HE’ D TAKE 

IT OFF AND GET A NEW ONE

I’ M IN THE COLLECTIONS OF 

SINATRA AND THE ENGLISH 

QUEEN HE’ D SAY THEN GO OUT

AND SING FOR HIS  SUPPER , 

BUSKING IN THE

REMAINS OF THE DAY

WHY SOME BECOME

RICH AND FAMOUS IS A 

CURIOUS THING TO SPECULATE 

WE ALL HAVE OUR INDIVIDUAL 

MAGNIFICENCE AND THEN

ITS UP TO FATE

SOME ARE BORN                         

IN THE BACK OF TAXI CABS 

OTHERS IN STABLES  

ON BALES OF HAY       

TONY WAS BORN              

ON A POOL TABLE IN LAS VEGAS 

WHEN HIS MAMA DROPPED HIM                        

BEHIND THE 8 BALL

BORN BETWEEN THE IRISH      

AND THE CHEROKEE              

LIVING BETWEEN THE DESERT 

OF ARIZONA AND THE SWAMP 

OF ANTWERPEN BELGIE

SCATTERING HIS SEED AND

SPATTERING HIS PAINTS 

 LIVING IN THE PRESENT 

WITHOUT RESTRAINTS

SO RUMORS OF TONY ’S  DEMISE 

CIRCULATED EVERY FEW YEARS 

BUT WHEN HE DIED IN ‘99 THE 

STORIES OF HIS EXPLOITS 

BROUGHT LAUGHTER AND TEARS

ANNMARIE TOOK HIM BACK TO

THE DESERT WHERE THEY 

LOWERED HIM INTO THE EARTH

THEN ALL WATCHED AS THE 

WIND PICKED UP , SWIRLED & 

CARRIED HIS SPIRIT BACK TO 

THE PLACE BEFORE HIS BIRTH

 Thank you Ken for your testimony.

Nello's dream

Tonight there is an other meeting of the Nello's dream society and Tony will once again be remembered by his friends... He has been gone for 12 years now and he still manages to touch people.
Here a picture of Indians dreaming of dancing...

Nello's dream

So many years later Tony's work still unleashes emotions in Hoboken. Claude, here in the picture of the newspaper which picked up the story, alerted me to the fact that Tony's painting 'Nello's Dream' was in storage in a cellar since the closure of the information center. Not living in Hoboken  anymore, I hadn't caught up on the fact.  So I wrote a kind letter- in the press they wrote a disgruntled letter- made a phone call and behold the district secretary personally hung the painting again against the wishes of those who thought the colors clashed with the wall... Well All is good that ends good and I do wish to thank all who made it happen.

Nello and Patrache

The old story which played out in Hoboken near Antwerp, was dear to Tony's heart. he identified with Nello, who was also a good painter. After some reshuffling in the district the painting had vanished and people who care alerted the blog. A few telephone conversations further and one letter, I am glad to announce that the paiting: Nello's dream will be displayed again in the districts house of Hoboken. Good news!

Angels

Once in a while we all needs angels. When Tony did, he just drew them or took his guitar and sang to them. This is one of the easels in the corner house in Hoboken. He had three there, all rather big. He often worked at two pieces at the same time , usually in very different styles, but with the same basic palet.

Painters at play

If you look well at this painting you'll see an assortment of painters in the guise of harlequins and magi. They hold the pallet, and have each a brush tipped with a different color. They paint the spring with gentle color. I think often Tony would have liked to repaint a better, prettier world than the one he saw. Although on other days he was in the best of all possibles worlds. That is dichotomy in a fertile mind.

The pond

THE POND


Morning in Hoboken. Light meets me again, the light
of long languid days at the pond near Lawrence Hall.
Oh, eight again in the orphanage of Chicago!
(My Cherokee daddy took a deadly drink of acid,
run-down by the taunting sneers about his lineage.)

All the time of the world. I and the boys never plan,
it all happens to us of itself, like one day
just being dropped here of itself. It is a tacit covenant:
misery we drown together in this secret pond
in the middle of the woods. All our senses sharp.

All gradations of green circle the glade where clouds
touch water, pink veils brought in by the wind.
I hear yesteryear’s sounds: the song of redwing and hummingbird
blending with our high voices of boys and the diving,
the breaking and splashing of water. We looking for water turtles.

Briefly eight again in the orphanage, but the screeching
of the seagulls brings me back. Winter in Hoboken.
Fog collars me now. Singularly touches me,
mutes colors and sounds. People hurry by, numbed and lost
deep in themselves. It is the restraint that strikes me here:

of the light hardly showing color, of the pigeon on the branch in the mist,
of nothing still stirring, of sound we gave a name but continues
to stutter strangely in the ears and, if at last the sun breaks through,
the shifting of shadow and light. It is my heart that is touched here.
Years and years beyond words.

Rose Vandewalle wrote this poem for the Demer Publication 'Black Sun' which you can order at Lulu. It is close to Tony's sentiments mixed with her own sensitivity. She knew Tony, owns work by him, has known the painting in my living room for a long time.

Double portrait ten years laters

TOOLS OF SOLACE


Pen pallet pencil
with tools life is lived
and then the red
touched with the smallest
brush
minutes till sudden death

for the colors
gray for the polder sky
for doves up high titanium white
viridian green for trees and woods
alizarin, crimson, rose madder
for lust, blush, desire, burning fire
Naples’ yellow
for a sweater painted twice
and blue
for the hue of soul
Sienna, umber, burned earth
for desert and for sand

and for
the smell of paint &
turpentine
I was ablaze

so it is that
with scorched hand
I write -

My poem from ' Black Sun': Gedichten voor Tony Mafia / Poems for Tony Mafia (boek): 10 poets whom I thank!

Here you can read and order:

The painting obviously is a double portrait, painted not too long before May 10, 1999. It speaks of the importance of art and caring. Tony you are remembered and missed. Lets celebrate life!

Giving the blue apple

Driving trough the North of France and seeing the yellow golden fields of flowering colza (rapeseed) reminded me of a 1995 larger (200 cm by 151 cm) oil Tony painted in Hoboken after one of many trips to Strasbourg probably late April, early May. The yellow sky was how he rendered these fields reaching to the horizon. The tree on the left with the blue apples is the tree of art and the person to the right is a forefather. The female figure already has a yellow apple while Tony wanted to give her a blue one. The painting is a double portrait in happy, whole times. It is currently displayed in a small show organized by 'De Blauwe Regen' in Antwerp.

God feeding the dancer

God feeding the dancer is an installation or as Tony called it an 'environmental'. The red circle in the painting is continued in a red carpet completing the circle on the floor. To the right on the carpet was a nice round fishbowl with two goldfish swimming. To the left on the floor was small a wooden board with a text :dancing a wild wind of chaos. The painting 3 meter high, two meter wide was painted in 1992 and stood in our bedroom. It is one of the paintings Tony used to play his guitar to.

Harlequin Painter

In a gentler mood in 1999 Tony painted this harlequin painter. He saw the task of the arts as being the fools or more like the jesters at a royal court: showing and saying what one sees. Here a trapeze artist and Tony himself slightly touch the painter in a protective gesture of reassurance & support. When people called him a genius he thought that to be unfair. They load the responsibility they don't want on his shoulders to fit the image of the starving artist in a cold attic, not understood by the world. He felt that people unloaded the burden of being something great from their shoulders onto his. Note also the landscape and its far horizon and enjoy!
ps: I've tossed the yellow sweater ;-)

The Cocktail Party

it is an early spring day, a perfect day for a garden party like this one. The party is a bit crowded to my taste but I think Tony enjoyed painting it. I like the blue of the sky and the white clouds and the forever symbolic Martini glass. A fun moment in Hoboken in 1999. It is hanging in the small show at the East Castle in Antwerp.

Abstract faces

The name of this painting, painted in Hoboken in 1999, should have been 'Abstract faces and dancing nudes'... It an oil with parts where the paint is almost sculpted on. Other parts of the canvas can be seen through the light wash. Explore the secrets hidden in the colors. Find the forms and tell the tales that come to you.

Poison

In 1998 there was a major flood in Antwerp and surroundings and our address having been Lageweg 431 in Hoboken we were thoroughly flooded out. Tony saved the two dogs floating on a chair after coming home from the hospital and the factory must have opened some lines which they shouldn't have. The result was a poisonous slme, sludge clearly visible after pouring out od the factory. This paper was tainted by it and Tony painted the appropriate subject on it: Poison. He cared about nature, was a fisherman and wanted the water to be clean. He wasn't the best recycler though. He also loved his cars, the excuse being his getting out of breath when walking too far. This piece was in the retrospective of Hoboken 'A brush'.

Tearing skull

Among the garbage in the street Tony picked up a canvas and painted this amazing piece. You will see when you click to open the picture that the faces are compositions of other figures that landscapes and humans flow together. Tony was in that time (1998) fascinated by the form of drops of water. He probably was also depressed on and off and thus tears appeared on his canvasses. Here is the combination of tenderness and sadness, tranquility and a tearing skull.

The lizard

The lady with the lizard over her shoulder also holds, or is part of, an egg shaped form filled with people. I love the colors, the contrast between the straight, stark lines and the gentle flow of the figurative work. Lizards are an important symbol in Native American iconography. It represents purity. This is one of Tony Mafia's late works, but it bears no date and was painted in Hoboken.

The sheepherder

This whimsical sheepherder stems from 1994. See the sheep peeking over the rim of the painting? I am partial to the abstractions of reds in the background, the half horizon and the tears the shepperd is crying. Why, one has to wonder.

The ascension

The ascension of Christ is a real large canvas more than 2 meter by 2 meter. It depicts several scenes of the old and new testament: The opening of the Red Sea, the taking off the cross of Christ, Mary Magdalen bending over with her hair and Mary almost cartoonish. As I have written before Tony struggled with his faith, hoped there would be a god, but not realy count on it. In his worst moments of fear he prayed. He had asked for a catholic funeral and there have been services in Hoboken and in Arizona. He was always sincere when painting, the canvas and the result on it is what mattered most.

Action

Here you see Tony Mafia in action in Hoboken. I am showing three pictures because he uses pencil, pastel oil crayons and oil: that is what I mean when I state that a drawing is mixed media. The yellow angel was shown in Leonhard's Fine Arts Gallery in Braschaat. The pictures were taken 1998 by his friend DL. Note the writing in pencil around the second drawing and how different the colors are. He often had two drawings going and an oil painting at the same time, sometimes creating totally different paintings with the same colors, sometimes using different forms and styles. He did what he felt was needed to get a good result.

Dogman

Tony loved dogs. He was seldom without them. The drawing 'A time of five' is of his great Dane late sixties, Los Angeles I think. The photo is Tony in Hoboken with Tootsie and her tree puppies: Vita, Vivaldi and Vee...