My Father

by Michael Carrico

Page 1

Page 2

Michael Carrico

Michael Carrico

Michael Carrico

For as long as I can remember my father has been telling us, his children, this quote. I remember him setting us down one day when we were very young, and he said; “This is how you find”. He proceeded to take out a cheap piece of typing paper worth about two cents and a number two pencil, and he said; “You need cheap paper to find in, because it is in the imperfection that one can find, expensive paper is too perfect to do anything with”. From there he would point to a part of the paper and ask us if we see an eye there, and we would say yes, for in the imperfection we could see an eye. From the eye lead to a nose, down to a body sitting on a chair, and next to a chair was some strange animal sitting there. Then he reached over and grabbed one of the colours from our crayola crayons and proceeded to colour in the background. When it was finished, he said; “this is what picasso meant by finding”. And I myself have been doing it ever since.

My father began painting back in the mid sixties after his second marriage. He began kind of late in his life, in his thirties, and has told me that he always had the urge to paint, but finally was compelled enough to really take off. Here he got himself a studio downtown, a building shared by many artists at the time; a sort of artists community, you could say. During this time he was exploring what some of the more famous artists were doing, like for example giacometti, de Kooning, francis bacon, and obviously picasso. One can see in these early works, the obvious influences from some of these artists. Also during this time he was entering a lot of competitions, being excepted in new york, california, and seattle. Gradually he has done less and less of that, concentrating his energy on making another piece of art; and I imagine, at the age of seventy, competition doesn’t mean much anymore.

My father thinks, and so do I, that cubism, at least what braque and picasso were doing, came from crumpling photographs or drawings; or a crumpled “source”, as my dad would call it. One can really see this in picassos painting “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon”. In fact one can see where picasso imposed the african faces upon the women, something I don’t think was natural to the source, but fitted picassos dominate personality and the african influence on him at that time.

The early works of braque, picasso, and even chagall show the immaturity at looking at the “source”. The crumpled effect really shows up in the art, and in the early works of cubism almost overtakes the paintings. But as the artists mature, the crumpled effect is somewhat lost, because, I think, it is no longer needed; the artist begins to realize that it is the image that is important, not the enhanced aesthetics. In my fathers early work, one can see this same transition that takes place. Once my father realized this idea of sources, he started looking everywhere for new kinds. He made paintings from sources like, treebark, smeared mud, and even one of his old palettes. The sources really become endless, because anything can become a source. But the crumpled photograph seems to hold up the best, there is something about taking the photo and changing the old reality (or as picasso said it, “destroying the reality”), to have it become something new. “Finding is the thing.”

My father in a desire to make cheap sculpture (for our family was rather poor and on a limited income), looked at the possibilities that were afforded to him. This started back in the mid to late seventies. He realized that bronze was out of the question. He had tried a welding torch once and didn’t care for that either. Then there was all the complexities of working with clay, and none of these were affordable or appealing. So he then looked at cement. Cement was very cheap and was very durable. He has often told me over the years, that people like bronze because they like the fact that it has been on fire; people don’t like cement because they think of it in terms of a sidewalk. He says that people are attracted to the purity of the material, instead of the form itself, which is the essence of the sculpture.

Next