The Troubadour

Tony Mafia used to MC the Hootenannies at Doug Weston's The Troubadour in L.A. Music has aways been important in his life, sometimes sustaining him when his painting wouldn't do that. He started The Innertubes who later became The Men and still later became The Association.
When in Antwerp he introduced the hootenannies every Tuesdaynight in the legendary Muziekdoos run by Frank. The drawing My loves and an Irish song refers to this. Note the plural loves. He enjoyed the Irish bards and became good friends with many of them: Pat and Una, Robbie...

Pencilpusher

This whimsical mixed media from 1982 is called 'De naaktflitser', alias the exhibitionist. Someone else probably wrote the title in English. It is funny and innocent the way he treated this subject. Tony was rather prudish in real life, but on canvas and in drawings he could be free, sensuous and gentle.

Tango

Green eyes and a Tango: a bunch of Tony's friends were into tango and Tony without having had any lessons was the hight of elegance when he would do a few steps. He saw what they did and improved upon it. I think the green eyes refer to jalousie in this case since one girl wouldn't let her partner dance with any other... That is the stuff of life and paintings.

Two

A typical double face, male and female is shown here once again as one. Maybe Tony Mafia expressed a romantic idea of love in Two or the recognition that we have all both male and female traits in us. This free and easy piece of 1985 is part of the dentist's collection.

Two fotographs

The titles suggest that both drawings go together: The bottom one is called 'What I am' and the top one 'Where I am". Note the pigeons, this suggests to me it is a European drawing, note the horses and Indians, well just his soul speaking. Who knows anything about these mixed media drawings?

Not to look

This is a picture I found in Tony's rickety trailer. I have seen him paint other parrots once in while. He loved birds. At a certain point we had 27 bird cages in a small apartment. Waking up to all that song was fun. If anybody knows anything about this painting, please share with the world, when, where, whom and so on.

At work

In the first photograph you can see the beginning of the painting that you see in a further stage in the second picture. Note the painting in the background: it is a ghost dance with a lot of Indian symbols and also note that the hand is fuzzy, it moves to fast wheras the rest is sharp: I am the fastest brush in the West he used to say. The pictures were taken by DG on June 28 in 1998, probably with just a few hours difference. The oil painting became a nice trapeze artist in a circus tent.