Painting a clown on a trapeze in Chloride

This painting was done in 1998 in the front room of the gas station. The first beginning is at the top left, the second phase, botom left near the end when the light was getting low. For good measure sake also look at the smaller pallet he used and the freshness of the colors on it. He always used oil paint never acrylic. It sadly was Tony's last summer in Arizona... If you click on the picture it should get bigger.

An other Tony Mafia painting on e-bay

This painting by Tony is currently for sale on e-bay I guess it is late sixties, early seventies and typical for the way he painted in thouse years. And yes he loved his guitars and pretty girls. I do like the background and the suggestion of choppy stones, the iron bars for the window and the women in red in the back... Charming.

It is signed but I find no date on it and yes it is oil on canvas.

Lady with a banjo

Laura was kind enough to send this picture and the following text:

I grew up with this painting in my home. My father bought it and another similar one of a woman and baby years and years ago. We live in L.A., and it is in a similar style to the Torero painting on the blog. So, I'm assuming from the same time as that one?

it is on canvas. 24" x 36". as is the other one.

Dear Laura, thanks for sending this picture and your story with it. To my best knowledge I would place this painting at an early sixties. He was still in a rather decorative phase with big eyes. Yet the background already shows many characteristics of his later work: the abstract flowers, the small doll like figure and the red abstractions. It certainly is a nice piece. I am wondering however that on the picture I can't see a signature nor a date, which is rather unusual.

PS. Laura send me the picture of the signature which she had cropped off and it certainly is his handwriting.

Guapa de Anversa

Found where she was lost
Waiting for you
in tenderness and blue


Oil 1992, painted in the Kloosterstraat.

End of Romance

Tony was an artist with a restless soul.
Whenever he was confronted with challenges and setbacks he found consolation in his home country.
Every time he left he had to say goodbye to a lover and this was food for his creativity and work.
This painting shows the unbearable pain and sorrow of saying goodbye.

Oil painting 1983, Antwerp, in the distress of a break up

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!

Torero

Dear Attila, thank you for your questions about Tony Mafia and this particular painting. From your description of the support (a kind of board with canvas on one side) for the painting I gather that he painted it in the United States. Probably in Los Angeles, California, in a period that he didn't have a real canvas and was a strugling artist without funds. It definitely is an original and a fairly early work I think, based on the way it is painted. I would say it is after his stay in Casares in Spain. The painting seems to be in good condition. That, the subject, also the size decides the value. A collector of Tony Mafia's paintings or a bullfight lover, might want to spend some money on this canvas. Bullfights were certainly a recurrent theme in his work. He loved the flamboyance and the vibrant colors, the life and death issues dealt with through beauty and ritual. I would put a 5.000 $ price for a particular sale. It may take a while however to find the person who would fall in love with the painting and willing to invest his money in Tony's work. I know for a fact that after the stay in Casares he had a show in Rue St. André des Arts in Paris with Spanish and bullfight paintings and that the show sold out. I heard it a couple of years ago from the Gallery owner Madame Besnard. So it might be a good thing for you.

Terrea Lea

Perhaps more than any other performer, Terrea Lea can take credit for bringing folk music to West Coast audiences. Long before Hootenanny was the order of the day she was singing folk songs and playing the then dozen available folk albums to audiences through her own radio and television shows and, as a guest artist on many top-rated programs.

More dedicated to the advancement of an art form rather than preserving one, Terrea herself is a perfect example of a fad much too exciting to be a passing fancy - of a fad that has become a permanent and glowing fixture on the musical scene. Terrea's music making, her artistry, her exciting personality and warm and contagious singing style have combined to firmly establish her in the hearts of audiences as a major and unique performer.

For over six years she has been providing the best that folk music has to offer at The Garret, in West Hollywood. On stage Opening Night at The Garret, and now more than six years later, combining extraordinary guitar work with her rich, vibrant voice, she is still capturing new listeners and keeping the old ones coming back. Thus having built a tremendous following.

Terrea hails from Liberty Landing, Missouri, the jumping off point near Independence where the wagon trains headed West, and what town name could sound more like the birthplace of one of America's great artists. It's also the place where Jesse and Frank James pulled the first daylight bank robbery, and where later Jesse James escaped from the Clay County Courthouse, in Liberty.

Born June 6th (Gemini), she's an only child, the daughter of a devoted Scotch-Irish, English and (a bit of) American Indian mother, Elizabeth, who encouraged her musical pursuits, and of her father, Everett, an electrical contractor of German descent. She was a Girl Scout and the President of her high school sorority. She won the National Music Contest for "contralto solo" in Liberty High School. And she played the flute and piccolo in the Band.

Music became her main interest when she turned to formal music training at William Jewell College. As a result of music she won a scholarship to Drake University in Iowa. Her mentors tried desperately to steer her on a classical career (obviously without success). She came to Los Angeles and appeared in light operas, films, and did a great deal of studio work, dubbing the singing voices for Larraine Day, Donna Reed, Lois Smith, and Joan Hackett, among others. And she became a fairly successful pop singer.

She was rather unhappy at this kind of work. It gave her too little gratification as a performer and artist. Shortly after reaching a degree of success as a popular singer and actress in Hollywood, her mother gave her a guitar for her birthday and it seemed Terrea's proper niche in show business was found.

It was during this time that Terrea discovered an immense satisfaction in singing folk material and started to build up a repertoire of folk songs both old and new, not as one of the defenders of the musical boredom that for so long had passed for folk music, but as a singer of folk tunes with a new approach, updated for present-day consumption. This she accomplished through tedious long hours of library and other research work. During the period when she developed this store of folk music authenticity there was next to nothing on the subject readily available as there is today. Her work was rewarded with the solid background of American lore and heritage. Today her repertoire includes more than 400 songs from all over the world.

Terrea has not just confined herself to introducing new and lovely songs to her audiences. She has also been responsible for introducing and bringing several exciting and talented performers to the attention of good-music enthusiasts.

Among the many artists she has introduced are the RCA recording stars, The Womenfolk, and The Villagers, Gale Garnett, Les Baxter's Balladeers, and others.

As Bud Dashiell, of Bud and Travis, says, "She is generally looked upon with 'special regard' by people in the field." Perhaps this explains why most of the top folk acts, when in Los Angeles, head for The Garret to catch one of her sets.

Terrea lives in a medium large white Spanish-style house on a quiet side street in Hollywood. The abode has great charm and reflects her many interests. There's a quaint fish pond in the front patio where Shane, a female German shepherd, or Andre, a male chocolate poodle, are apt to be watching the slithering goldfish.

The color scheme of the interior is blue and white with antique gold finishes, everything being set off by the magnificent Marie Antoinette chandelier in the living room. Above the black slate fireplace hangs one of Tony Mafia's lovely oil paintings. Terrea has a collection of clown paintings and her favorite is "Roy" by Vern, which hangs in the entrance to the living room, above a century old pewter coffee service. She likes comfortable furniture along the Danish, Spanish or Italian lines, and some of these pieces accent the various rooms with the air of gracious living. Her king sized bed is covered by a pale gold spread to coordinate with the orchid carpets and antique white shutters.

To relax she plays piano by the hour, reads (often voraciously devouring everything she can find about a specific historical character who's piqued her interest after seeing a particularly exciting film), or listens to semi-popular and semi-classical records, expecially piano concertos and motion picture theme music on her stereophonic tape recorder and record player. She has a large collection of albums that very from blues to opera. She doesn't like entire operas but loves to listen to the portions that please her, particularly the Puccini arias. The rest of the time, "I just sit and watch the fish", (while working diligently on more new folk songs), play chess ("I collect chessmen"), bicycling, and collecting old Greek coins to make into medallions.

She says she has no real favorites in songs and refuses to pick any favorite among the folk field. (Although she admits Harry Belafonte, who started in the folk field at the same time, is one of her favorite performers along with Bud and Travis.

Terrea drives a black Le Mans convertible with black leather upholstery and black tires because she thinks whitewalls are not conservative enough.

Terrea has a very keen sense of usually dry humor. Off stage she is warm, conservative, interested in everyone and everything. Her moments of outgoing humor are nominally part of her professional personality. She is actually shy and modest. She doesn't like being "on" and she hates to be called "Miss Lea".

She likes to cook, especially barbecued foods. And her favorite food is a New York steak. She likes casual clothes, Abano perfume, long stemmed red roses, golf, poker, Nichols and May, the funnies, Peanuts, ("and the Akron ads"). Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged", Marcia Davenport's "Of Lena Geyer", and Lloyd Douglas' "The Robe", The Carmel-Monterey area, and the colour, Blue. If she ever decided to retire from music and folk-singing she thinks she would like to do so by opening a guest ranch in northern California, and "raise poodles".

Terrea also likes paintings and drawings of sad, tramp clowns, the Dodgers, refinishing furniture, puppies, Cezanne, champagne, fine woods, mugs, almond Hersheys, and the movies.

She's a real movie fan and sees most any type of film. She's not quite sold on foreign films, preferring American productions. ("Anything starring Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman, Peter O'Toole or Audrey Hepburn.")

Alcohol doesn't interest her and she smokes very little. When she wants to be sociable she lights up an Alpine. Terrea enjoys watching television but has little time for it as she works six nights a week performing for her great following at The Garret. "That leaves time for the News and 'Leave It to Beaver', I guess."

She's interested in foreign languages only because she'd like to travel but does not care to study one just to be studying. "But before I see Europe I want to see all of the United States," she says.

The famous people she's most admired are Jeanne d'Arc, Kirsten Flagstad, Chopin, Franz Liszt, Rubinstein, and Eileen Farrell.

She's never had and operation or been seriously ill or hospitalized. But she's sung frequently in Veterans' hospitals both in wards and in the theatres.

Her thinking in regards to money is that it's a wonderful necessity but "you must rule it instead of letting it rule you." If she ever got a windfall she'd "probably put it in the bank, and maybe go out and buy a new poodle."

Terrea has a twelve string guitar and two classical Rodriguez instruments. They are her most prized possessions and the last one was specially dedicated to her by Rodriguez. Her favorite guitarist is Larindo Almeda. She has been collaborating on writing songs. For many years people have asked why she hasn't written songs. Recently it came about on its own volition and she's now including some of them in her performances.

She hasn't many dislikes but what she doesn't like, she strongly doesn't like: real spicy foods, the color puce, anyone tapping on her seat in a theatre, noisy gum chewers, licorice, escargots, hats, broaches, entire operas, "Miss Lea", Communism, and Americans who are pro-communistic.

Her favorite dates are of the Grant-O'Toole type. He must be a good conversationalist, and "since I don't care for hiking in the hills", must prefer the indoors to outdoors activity. For her pleasure she likes dates that include good dining, the theatre, concerts, movies or dancing.

Terrea is a student of Unity and attends Dr. Wilson's Christ Church Unity. She often sings at the church, and to her religion is a personal, quiet matter.

About modern youth she holds a very good impression. "They're underestimated. Much corruption of youth can be contributed to lack of proper example from adults. At The Garret they are usually a better audience to perform for, as opposed to some adults. They show respect. By adults showing a positive attitude towards youth, giving them responsibility, they would undoubtedly meet it. I'm not the least bit worried about the future when the United States is put into the hands of our youth of today."

Terrea Lea's list of professional credits is extensive. In the area of television she played a year on Station KCOP with a weekly fifteen minute Terrea Lea Show, and 36 weeks on the same station with a fifteen minute daily program. For thirteen weeks she did a weekly half hour Terrea Lea Show on Station KABC, and for 26 did a five minute daily Terrea Lea Show on KNBC.

Besides her own shows she appeared as a regular on the Bill Stulla Show, and the Red Rowe Show. For a year she appeared twice weekly on the Betty White Show, and for two and a half years was a regular on each program on the Tex Williams Show.

She has appeared as a guest on "This Is Your Life", "Ding Dong School", "The Bill Bailey Show", Premiere '60, Alcoa Theatre - "Five, Six, Pick Up Sticks", Twilight Zone - "Jess Belle", The Richard Boone Show - "All the Comforts of Home", Channing - "A Rich and Famous Folksinger Like Me", The All Night Show with Joe and Betty Karbo, Lloyd Thaxton Show, Al Jarvis Show, Panorama Pacific and Educational programs on Folk Music for the Board of Education.

Most recently she has made multiple appearances on both the Saturday night Jack Barry Show, and on The Folk World of Jimmy Rogers program, singing such favorites of her audiences as "It Was a Very Good Year", "Golden Apples of the Sun", and "Julie Ann".

The Terrea Lea Show on radio played for three years on NBC for fifteen minutes twice weekly, and for a nightly half hour for a year and a half on KABC radio. It was also carried by the Armed Forces Radio network and through the years many of the servicemen who'd heard her songs while serving in far corners of the world have stopped at The Garret to her her sing to them in person. The Terrea Lea Show played for a half hour nightly for 26 weeks in the San Francisco area over Station KYA, and for 26 weeks, she did a fifteen minute program three times weekly over Station KXLA.

Also on radio, she was a regular for three years on the Tex Williams Show, and a regular on the American Barn Dance program and the Harry Babbitt Show. Guest appearances included Nightbeat, the Steve Allen Show, Suspense Theatre, NBC Theatre, the Joe Dolen Show and the CBS Lucky Strike Show.

On record she has done a series of transcriptions for Capitol Records, two sides for Coral and six sides for Intro Records. Her albums include "Terrea Lea and Her Singing Guitar" on HiFi, "Terrea Lea Folk Songs and Ballads" on ABC Paramount label, "Terrea Lea At The Garret" on Valon and "Les Baxter's Balladeers" on the Reprise label.

Terrea starred in nightclub appearances at The Hootenanny Club (with Bud and Travis), The Chi Chi in San Diego, and at Johnny Walsh's Deauville Club on the Sunset Strip, besides over six years at The Garret in West Hollywood.

She was featured in "Bewitched," starring Phyllis Thaxter and Edmund Gwynn, and a number of other motion pictures.

Her concert appearances include the Greek Theatre, the Hollywood Bowl, UCLA, Pasadena City College, about a dozen high schools in the Los Angeles area and with Jimmy Rodgers at the Imperial Valley California State Fair.

Terrea Lea's warm and contagious personality, her gracious handling of audiences, and her offering of the finest folk music available have gained her the respect and admiration of the young, the new adult, and all members of the family. She is a credit to Show Business, a consummate

Chloride (for Bret)

Chloride would drive Tony into a frenzy. This painting is proof of that. On a dark stormy night, rain gushing down, he got 'restless', 'crazy', 'anxious'. What the feeling was that would grab hold of him at those times. He tore out a piece of boarded fence and painted these Indians, which he gave away the same night to Ken F. Some people he took to immediately, like to you Bret. Talking and listening, joking on the back porch were good and cherished moments. I too learned from you, your voice and turning on the preacher as a demonstration... I hope you are well. If you post a comment with your e-mail, I'll reply to you and then erase the comment to keep your mail private. I hope that works for you.

Nude oil

This is a sweet pastel nude. Once again the picture isn't perfect: no signature, no date, but nice pinks around the nipples. I think it is part of a larger painting done early seventies. A lovely lady...

Fuq hate

'Fuq Hate' and 'Love' in the background, I guess this qualifies as a political painting. It must still have been in the Vietnam war years. Note also the typical fish on the head. Tony used to put them in many paintings. I am not sure whether there was a Christian connotation or not. Enjoy the gentle colors and the sure lines.

Erotica

Well here is Pan and a nymph in action. As far as I can tell it is an oil from the sixties. Figurative but with hidden figures and areas of abstractions. Enjoy.

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.

Rain/Reign

It is a dark, rainy day in spring. In this flat country there are many rainy days. It changes the colors. Everything drips,all is watery. But even then there the bright red outline who reigns over the painting. There are the the far desert vistas and at least three gentle landscapes. This non linear but layered painting jumps between the different realities, different emotions. The thick cutout lines every time again isolate a separate reality, the other meaning, the other 'signifié'. The reading of Tony Mafia's painting remains open to the reader. he was a forceful man, but not an authoritarian painter. The painting was shown in Leohards Gallery

The sater

Tony's nephew Joe:
The painting was done in North Las Vegas 1986. I bought it from Ed Morgan (my step dad) a few years ago. He had it in a trailer that was not very tall so the top was rolled, folded over and forced to fit. That put a crease across the top and caused some damage but mostly it is in good shape.
I think it's the devil stealing a woman from that poor guy who looks like he has been hypnotized. If all's fair in love and war then I think this is a painting about Love. Sorry I'm not much of a critic when it comes to art and my thoughts. I will say this is one of those paintings that the more I looked at it the more I liked it.
Note to Joe: it is Greek mythology; Pan with the flute and a very light haired Sater to boot. It must be an idealized self-portrait of Tony... I love the wide open space of the landscape. I think it was shown in the La Brea Gallery in Las Vegas.

The Art Critic

Tony Mafia didn’t like to talk about his work in a theoretical way. He also was not good at it. He disliked art critics and even more art journalists. In interviews almost all journalists preferred to talk about the man rather than about his work. They liked his work all right but were intrigued by the persona. Yet Tony often said not to put a too fine point on it: ”My work is better than I am. I just the asshole you know.” So it was through at lack of savvy, or a predilection of the person he spoke too that the narrative of Tony’s life was typified and framed as the life of the restless artist, from rags to riches and back again in no time, honest is his drive and work. Tony didn’t speak the language of critical discourse and didn’t have the words to explain why he did what he did. When, however, friends or strangers came to the house or gas station he would give a guided tour by all the work, showing the different elements, the composition, which always came from his hand and heart. He would point out colors and combinations of colors and how they work. Tony had a sense of the greatness of his work but felt he didn’t fit in the tradition of contemporary art although he considered himself part of that evolution. He was a cult painter for a small group of followers who collected and loved his work. Some viewers are troubled because they cannot discern the meaning nor the why of a painting, at least not rationally. With the heart, with feeling they would learn how to look at his work over time. With some this leads to frustration, with others to lifelong love.

One of the aspects I appreciate in TM’s work are the manifold openings into the layers of possible meanings. That way each person discovers a different painting. Yet one element almost always returns: Tony will give the viewers an opening, an escape route out of the painting, a place to rest, a silence in which to gather oneself. He is not an authoritarian painter imposing only one possible view of his work. Tony did not really plan out a painting by doing sketches or such. With one color of oil he might start out to map a canvas, yet nothing said he would follow the road on which he started out. When a piece of work became too decorative he did something to make it harder for himself and tried to do a really good painting. He was driven. Many of his old friends have testified to the fact that he needed to paint, that when he had no paper or canvas he would paint on anything: an old fence pulled out of the ground in the rain, tarps, doors, the wooden lid of a flour bin from a burned out Jewish bakery … Whatever he could lay his brush on and paint out the darkness of his soul on.

Being an outsider with tons of charisma he didn’t know how to play the field, nor how to get into the big museums. That brought sadness because Tony craved immortality for his work. He was a very visual man, but we should also remember him as a musician playing folk rock, blues, flamenco, blue grass on guitars, banjos and harmonicas. Everything he did had a rough edge, sometimes a feel of something unfinished, sometimes of a chaos that he tried to make sense of. I have work the size of a stamp and huge canvasses. He himself considered the way he dealt with composition and color as being abstract although in most of his work you will find human beings. Of most of his later work I know the history and so the canvasses become the theater on which he played out his life, sometimes our life, sometimes touching on the sacred or the secret of life and death.

Often, I would hear Tony play the guitar to his paintings. To him his best work was alive, said more than what he consciously had put in them. With Tony Mafia painting was knowledge of technique, experience and heart, a life hard lived that is condensed in his fast and intuitive brush strokes. Yes you will recognize Tony by his brush strokes.

The painting was in three shows.

The actor

This 1995 oil is very dear to me. You might not know that Tony had been an actor. In his new York period he had followed classes in Method Acting with Lee Strasberg and knew quite a lot of people from the Hollywood scene, some of them loving his work. One story is worth repeating. He was in Blood Wedding of Federico Garcia Lorca. He was one of the wood choppers and the understudy for the male lead. He only once had to perorm that role and when I asked 'How did you do,' His repley was: 'I sucked!' The oth wood chopper always tried to overplay him and thus mostly their scene wasn't too good till the day that at his first replique Tony kicked the other guy hard in the scins and got him really mad. So they really looked at each other, feeling flew over the stage and they had a major applause for their performance. After that night, they always played well without any kicking...

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 ;-)

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.

Green Indians

Green Indians in the woods and water are obviously an imagined landscape, a dreamscape. Tony's brother told me that Tony identified with the West. As kids they would regularly see westerns. Also one set of grandparents was full blooded Indian. As a grown up he reflected about his identity and claimed his Indian heritage more and more. It was a recurrent theme in his life and work.