When I was a young one, living in Antwerp, I fell in with a group of American expats. We all were drawn to The Folkcenter and The Matthijs, where Tony, Deroll Adams, and Norris held court. Those were the years when I took a little dip in the waters of folk singing myself but soon found out that I didn’t have the nerves to be a performer.
So, I crawled back into my pen.
Then I went and lived in England for a year. Tony went off somewhere. When I returned to Antwerp, he had come back as well. He would come and visit me and I would spend hours listening to his stories. He also played guitar for my baby son, who has grown into quite an accomplished guitarist.
One day, talking to Tony, I told him I was looking for a gift for my parents. The next time we met, he presented me with this painting of a mother and child. When I wanted to pay him, he refused the money. That was Tony: a golden heart, a wonderful painter, and a great story teller both with his guitar and with words.
I left for Canada, after that. He went god knows where. One day, about thirty years ago, I happened upon him as he was busking somewhere in Antwerp. Still Tony, still doing the same thing, still true to his inner voice. We talked for a while. Then a good ten years later, I was visiting Antwerp again and there he was again, at the same spot, busking. It wasn’t as if he had been there all that time. No, he had just come back from the States and I was there, as usual, for a short visit and on a rare occasion when I was not being driven by a family member.
It was one of those wonderful twists of fate.
This time he invited me to visit with him and, that evening, I reconnected with Annmarie, whom I hadn’t seen since those youthful days of the Folkcenter. I must say that I feel privileged to have known this man and to have called him my friend.
And I am delighted to be able to visit with him on this blog.
Bieke Stengos (Cammaert)
Tony loved his guitars. All of them. He used to say that there is but one song for a specific guitar sometimes. He played also the banjo and the harmonica. This is an easy drawing, pen & ink, probably late sixties, early seventies. Hear his song...
The photograph is Tony on the middle mike, either with 'The Men' or with 'The Association' at Doug Weston's 'The Troubadour'.
The text round the drawing is from a song Tony wrote:
Sing a feeling among the players is the title of this double piece of about 160 cm wide 108 cm high: two pieces of German etching paper. Tony's mam had been a very pretty lady, she had worked as a chorus girl and a dancer in Las Vegas, in the Old Pioneer, in the Thunderbird among others. They had a few good nights on the town together when he was younger. The lyrics around the drawing reads...... a memory I feel the mothering of the often painted mask of beauty hung, lirics of the night at the ever crowd of morning, evenings, night alone in dance. He painted this salute to his mother on October 22 1989. Of course the singer is kind of Tony himself with his favorite guitar, bought for him by Dale R., a long time friend.
I guess we are all masked acrobats, not showing our feelings, unable to speak of our needs. Tony's biggest need was being able to just paint, just play music. More than once he said If at the end I become to sick, just put me in a room with my materials and instruments and put some food inside every day... You can feel the concentration on the instrument in the picture above. He is playing the 'Crying Madonna', bought in Montellano near Seville. The painting Masked acrobat is in Antwerp, owned by a fellow artist who has quite an impressive overall collection.
Spain and flamenco were returning subjects in Tony's work. This is a detail from a larger painting which you can view in full at the third floor in the Altiero Spinelli building of the European Parliament. Note the crying guitar player. He is just as god crying about the state of the world. Note the figure leaning in to the guitar, caressing, cradling it with body and soul. That is was music can do. In 1995 he got a very delicate guitar in Montellano, near Seville. When we heard some gypsies play near the church of the Crying Madonna the evening we brought her back, he decided to call the guitar just that. I believe he honored the delicate crying Madonna guitar in this flamenco player. The canvas was one to which he would return often, changing it sometimes drastically. He started it in 1995, worked on it in 1998 and May 1999. The last paint Tony spread was red on a tiny brush on this canvas.
Some of Tony Mafia's work has been used as covers for cd's, tapes or records. He did some posters for musicians he performed with like Derol Adams and Norris Bennett. His drawings have also been used for a few book covers etc... The canvas Pigs and Pyramids became the cover of the second cd by Las Vegas hard rock band 'Private Jones'. It was lead singer, guitarist David Alderson who made the choice. Their first cd was Life on March. Tony had heard them perform in Vegas and liked their 'masculine attitude' ...
