Trenton Doyle Hancock: The Wayward Thinker
Fruitmarket Gallery
Edinburgh, UK
10 Feb – 8 Apr 2007

by Rea Cris

Behold Edinburgh! This is Trenton Doyle Hancock, stepson of the unnamed Baptist minister hailing from the lands of Paris, Texas. He is painter, illustrator, collector and storyteller. Listen, listen! Blessed are we, for he is here to bring to you the tale of St. Sesom and his Cult of Colour, in his first major European solo exhibition.

Hancock’s oeuvre is a mixture of collaged paintings, prints, drawings, sculpture and writing in biblical style depicting meta-narratives and sub stories from his personal microcosmos, featuring his large collection of characters. Hancock’s narrative is complex and intertwined with fathers begetting children and illegitimate children and jealousy and battles between good and evil. The majority of the narrative centres around two groups: the Mounds and the Vegans. Critics and writers take great pleasure in describing the Mounds and the Vegans, stringing together word and word to describe each. The Mounds are the ‘good guys’ and as their name implies take the form of a mound shape with black and white strips. Though not conscious of their goodness, Mounds tend to keep all the good in nature flowing. Mounds are made up of moundmeat, which is equivalent to blood and is coloured pink, which Fiona Bradley, director for the Fruitmarket, describes as “suspiciously reminiscent of Pepto Bismol”, but which is also conveniently the same shade of pink as the Fruitmarket’s logo scheme. Like most of Hancock’s characters, Mounds are derived from himself, either as alter-ego or through singled out and exaggerated personality traits. Mounds are the result of Hancock’s desire to paint figuratively without using the figure. Vegans, on the other hand, are the ‘bad guys’, once human but now corrupt from inbreeding and living underground, who have lost the ability to see in colour. When first reading about the Vegans, I wondered whether Hancock had simply hijacked the word and ascribed his own personal vocabulary to it, but Hancock explains that real life vegans are painted as the personification of good and that by making them evil sprung from taking the “ absolute worst aspects of the group and exaggerating them to an absurd degree”.

His work has been described as the battle between good and evil, the hope that slumbers in the minds of the weak for justice and the realization that both good and evil spring from the same source. Knowing that Hancock is African-American raises debates about the American Civil Rights movement; as the jealous Vegans persecute the black and white Mounds, with their pink moundmeat a euphemistic colour for blood. What I took from the exhibition was a more personal struggle, a struggle I believe Hancock plays down. As aforementioned, many of Hancock’s characters are born from within, some as old as his childhood. Like a coping mechanism, they provide Hancock a platform from which to safely battle his fears and understand himself. A perfect example is Torpedo Boy, a “Linus’ blanket” character that Hancock dons when in his studio. Torpedo Boy comes complete with a vibrant costume that mirrors his “ bound-less energy”. It’s important to remember that while Hancock’s work is about meta-narratives, they cannot exist within something closer to home, internal battles use that which we equally hope to put to rest and simultaneously continue to nurse.

Hancock recounts his tales by painting directly onto the wall, sometimes hanging paintings over the text, sometimes writing around the canvas. When reading Hancock’s tale, you have to rely on memory as you shuffle like a typewriter from the beginning of a sentence to the end. Hancock’s paintings and prints depicting scenes from his tales are predominately painted in black and white and pink, occasionally mixed with collaged faux fur, bottle caps and other drawings. His character seep out from the paintings, only just visible are their hands and feet, their knobby fingers resembling those of the Viz comics. He used to agonize over creating “one ultimate painting”: one epic pictorial splendour that would encompass all his microcosmos. But it is the whole body of work that becomes the epic painting, with the strength and freedom to be seen collectively or separately. It has been questioned whether an audience could be so receptive to the work without the mythology behind it, but like all things, it helps when you know more but the lack of knowledge does not render it impenetrable. An audience would still come away with something, even from a sci-fi comic book background or a surrealist painterly background.

All quotes taken directly from exhibition catalogue, available to buy at gallery bookshop. Trenton Doyle Hancock The Wayward Thinker
A major monograph of the work of this young African-American artist.
Writers include: Fiona Bradley, Thelma Golden and Eleanor Heartney.

www.fruitmarket.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trenton_Doyle_Hancock
http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/hancock/

Tabatha wrote:
Come on, Hancock, are vegans in real life really venerated? Seen as the good guys? To me, they seem more like easy punching bags. Also, who knew that vegans were united into some kind of “group”? I think the whole narrative would be stronger without mucking about with existing social stereotypes.

Trenton wrote:
"Dear Tabatha,

I didn't choose vegans because of how easy it would be to take jabs at them. The vegans chose me. Assimilating them arose from my own personal experience with REAL vegans. I suppose I could have picked on macrobiotics, but at the time, none of them stepped forward to annoy me. Besides, m-a-c-r-o-b-i-o-t-i-c takes so much longer to write. Also, changing the vegans to some other group isn't going to strengthen the narrative. The narrative is strong enough and funny enough to suit my needs as an artist. If I felt like the writing didn't add to my project or serve any purpose, BELIEVE ME, I wouldn't do it. I hate spending extra energy on unnecessary pursuits. The narrative is primarily there as a springboard to make paintings. I don't classify myself as a writer, I'm a painter. I ONLY worry about making better paintings. Maybe it could be fun for you to write a "fan fiction" which replaces my vegans with alternate antagonists as you've suggested. I'd love to read it."

Trenton Doyle Hancock

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