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

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.

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.

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 ;-)

Seascape

After a series of new and vibrant work a quiet old piece.: a pastel seascape with clouds and hidden sun. It could be a bay, even a white water river. A fast but misleading impression makes one overlook the figure in the rocky foreground and the white self portrait in the foam.

Us

This small oil (about 45 cm by 35) Tony painted in Chloride in the early nineties. The misty figure with the white hair is Mr Mafia himself and the dark haired lady, well just me. Tony regularly did whimsical portraits and this, almost abstract, is a rather gentle one.

Alive

This little pen and ink drawing from November 1990 was probably done in the States but feeling blue for Antwerp. You see the city in the background. It shows one of Tony's recurrent themes: the art coming alive, taking off of the page: set free from art folder is what he wrote with it. Nice tribute to a city and its pretty ladies. Notice the harlequin and the musician in the drawings in the background? Tony Mafia had the blues...

The caling of color

This was a drawing Tony cared about. The full text is: To say the calling of paint would be to tell you of them that live in and around color. It is obviously a self-portrait while at work on a canvas. It also shows his beloved nudes and the black sun that is his secret Native American signature.

Painting the dance

This too is older work: 1974. Tony returned often to the theme of dance since it gave him a freedom in movement and costume. Here it is rather abstract or iconic. Interestingly there is the paintbrush on the right hand side... This is a self-referential detail so we know who looked and painted: Tony Mafia.

A place

alone in our middle world we try to feel each in a place of soul telling of a park, a place of young and did and do we exist I have seen you. That is what is written around this drawing called 'a place I know in Antwerp' painted in June 1988... To me the figure in the foreground is a self-portrait. He must have been thinking of when he first arrived in Antwerp, walking around, being fascinated as a sixteen year old. Then missing his ship and staying on in the Seaman's house for half a year, learning about the gray northern light, the color of air.

Double piece

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.

Old paintings

Old paintings is from 1989. Since he used the theme of an apple and a butterfly in some writing , I guess that is why he called it old painting. He might have found it in a stack and finished it... The lyrics around the painting say: It is brave a butterfly cann be happy in love with an apple and both of you I love... In the selfportrait Tony wrote about himself: I wait for my apple to hide in and will fall in love with a butterfly.

And came a king

This lovely drawing was painted in Chloride, Arizona in 1990. The left corner is a selfportrait and in that period a lady called Gina would come by once in a while. Maybe it was after one of these visits that he felt like a king... Who knows. Fact is that during a period he did a lot of blue paintings. Hue Webb a sculptor did make the comment later to me that Tony did only blue paintings. My guess is that he had run out of other colors. It had happened before in his life.

In my small world

This 1989 drawing is from a period in which a lot of drawings that are very blue. A mood or just lack of choice of colors? The text is just barely readable: .... Black sun has arrizen over a field of fantasy as lines off the moon off the moon as ... a memory of last night a dream I could not find. Virgins and lovemaking and the unicorn, it is all here, the whole mythology, the whole longing for love fulfilled. The man in the background seems to be a selfportrait. I hope he found what he was looking for. Gina, Twyla, maybe Veronica...

Selfportrait

A selfportrait with different loves from June 1989. Note the long mane, the big palet, the different paintings. This was the earliest time I noticed the paintings in a drawing. He is younger than in the picture at work taken in August 1998 by D.L. who owns the drawing. I can't quite read the text... Walking down the ... street I.... the paint flow in the rain and danced to the special ... of rage ... Who can tell us more ?

The guardian

Yes this painting is called the guardian. if you can spot this guardian, then you do look well at paintings. I like also the harlequins in it , the gentle figures and what I feel is a selfportrait. The painting belongs to a friend/collector who has a wonderful choice of Tony's work. Of course the landscape is dreamlike, a safe place to rest.

Not to like

Well Tony, the white curly hair is the giveaway clue that it is a selfportrait, obviously liked this blond lady, but he definitely didn't like cats. See the paintings in the background in top left corner and the wedding ring. He was astonished at how 'easy' Belgian women were. I just notice his small golden earring: definitely a selfportrait of a younger Tony.

Fuck death

Yes that is the title of this selfportrait from 1984. It was not a good year in his life, but he produced beautiful, powerful work. He represented death often as a pale rider, a pale woman, or in the traditional way as a skull and bones skeleton. I guess you all can read the text.
Tony could have a withdrawn, worn out look. Many people underestimated the pain, emotional, psychological and physical that his hypersensitive nature and heart disease caused him. He used all he encountered in his art. A word, a gesture could bring it all on. Sometimes taking a valium helped, sometimes not.

The Fool. 1975

Never once in the time
I have known has
anything been so
sure. but it is and I
opened my eyes and walked
out into the night, bells
rang low in the dark valley
their frightful calling follows
me to the golden bloom of
in the early morning’s swallow
eye.

I quavered even
my sure hand moved slower
than usual. a swallow eye! or
did it mean, a field of golden
corn golded after the passing
of summers warm.
to rest in ...or by
chance did it try to tell me
of thing of my needing orange
golden bleeding of a never
to loose dancing shoes
dancing me to the
river of the
way home.
up above
the dark

marking this dark door
no matter how high,
I danced on after
first taking a
stalk of corn of golden
and looking marking well
the swallow’s eye, saying to
myself: never once in my
life has anything been so
sure. I surely moved slowly.
to my opened eyed night of
ringing bell questions
to the time of
next



which rained
down a
answer I did not
(knot) which is too
well want to see, the
hidden me. drenched
in pity of, of love
and all bell follower
that would come
after me trying to
see, find, be,
as a endless
mountain
all to see
or know.


while the soul
of free in me be, knew
that winds blew
only for the
lone
who shall
never know
say in a
all knowing voice
never once in the times I
have known has any thing
been so young sure. that
can’t be not danced
to in golden corn
to the calling of
a blind
swallow -