Interviewed by Joe Montague
Celebrity artist Patrick Carney, better known to his close friends as Patty or Pat, is well known for his paintings and pen and ink drawings which represent a who’s who in the music industry and which have been collected by, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, Stevie Nicks, Bruce Springsteen and Pete Seeger, among others. He attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City, studying with such renowned artists as Robert Israel and Milton Glaser. It is however, neither Carney’s subjects, nor his education that have made his artwork some of the most sought after pieces by collectors; it is his skill with the brush and the pen that have attracted people’s attention, and it is his skill with people that continually builds upon his already loyal fan base. One does not need to know of, or know personally Patrick Carney for long, before you become keenly aware that he believes strongly in giving back to the community and others, to detect his sincerity as he offers words of encouragement to others, and to become aware that those who call him “friend,” speak first with words of praise about his character, before the conversation shifts to discussing his art.
For all that Patrick Carney is, on the surface, his rise to becoming known as one of the world’s truly outstanding artists, might very well be every parent’s worst nightmare, or at least on the surface, when he comes out with statements such as “When I look back at being expelled (from grade four) it was a blessing in disguise. (he chuckles) I have never liked rules, whether it was rules around life, rules around painting or rules around speed or what have you. I have always been one to challenge all of that.”
Had this writer not already become somewhat acquainted with Carney through mutual friends and highly respected San Diego singer / songwriter / musicians Rebeca and David (Randle) and Bridget Brigitte, I might have been somewhat taken aback, however one needs to understand the fuller context of Carney’s statement to appreciate the journey.
Responding to a question about his self description as a non conformist, Patrick Carney said, “I think it is about not wanting to be pigeonholed into a box. It started about fourth grade when I was in a parochial school in New York, when I was expelled for painting outside the lines and not painting the roads red and the leaves green, because that is not the way that I thought. I was labeled as what kids today might be (referred to) as a troubled kid, and that I was a threat to myself. They wanted me to write on the chalkboards that the roads were red and the leaves were green and I wasn’t going to do it. When I went to public school, I had to repeat the fourth grade, because I had only been (at the previous school) for one half of the year. I had a phenomenal teacher (at the new school) Mrs. Hunterdon, who taught me the love of words and the love of reading, which I didn’t have before. I grew up in a house with six kids. My mother was single parent, because my father died when I was seven. There was a heck of a lot of noise in that house. I was locked into not having the quiet time to do that. I had an art teacher at Somers High School named Bernie Watkins and I inherited his love for pen and ink, so when you look at my collection there is a lot of pen and it is a lot of a guy named Burne Hogarth, my teacher at the School For Visual Arts in New York City, who was the guy who did the original Tarzan illustrations. Having those two pen and ink renderers was absolutely huge in my life,” and it was at this point in our conversation that Carney uttered the words about the blessings of being expelled in grade four.
As one might expect, Patrick Carney’s art is a reflection of who he is and he has said, “Every artist dips his brush in his own soul and magically paints his own inner self and nature’s creativity in his pictures.”
“I typically don’t paint someone that I am not interested in, meaning that I (need to) have some kind of connection through the music or the lyrics. I am really big into singer / songwriters, their lyrics and the message that they are attempting to get across. When that happens, it is touching me in my personal soul. When I sit down to paint or to sketch an individual, I attempt to enter and to feel their inner essence through their eyes and that is a big, big part of my drawings. As you move through a room the eyes will follow you. I have been very successful in certain cases,” he explains, ending on a somewhat modest note.
Carney notes that his involvement with motivational speakers and organizations which promote self empowerment have enabled him to get past some of the blockages that are imprinted upon us from childhood, out of necessity to maintain the safety of children, but nevertheless become impediments in adulthood, “Don’t talk to strangers, well what do we do for a living? (we laugh in unison) The blockage is there. That is what I am attempting to do, is to break down all of the barriers between the musician and us, or the musician, their lyrics and us. I want to capture a moment in time for an individual who has been enamored, went to a concert or heard a lyric to a song for the very first time and when they look at my canvass, it brings it all back. The way that I do that is through color. I am not afraid of color and I am really into color. I believe there are four personality types that can be blended for people, but we do have one which is the primary style for who we are and that generates the color. I touch the color and I figure out who they are. That is what I attempt to do again, by touching my soul and using nature in the paintings to create the painting. Just licks on a guitar can change the colors in a room. When we enter a room or we see an object for the very first time our minds register the colors before anything else, before any other detail. I believe that the colors our eyes perceive are like words that form a subtle language and mood, and that can give us insight. Color can exert a general affect on the mind or the body, influencing how we feel and our physical health.”
