IN RETROSPECT | THE ARTISTIC JOURNEY Family Life
My parents were only seventeen years old when I came into their world. I was born Larry O’Neill Brown, Jr. on December 19, 1962, to Diretha Victoria Hall, my mother, and Larry O’Neill Brown, Sr., my father. Additionally, I had one older sister, Hilda, and one younger sister, Jacqueline. Both of my teenage parents were born in 1945, so we were a rare house of all baby boomers. We were also the typical struggling lower, middle class African American family surviving the climate of the 1960s and 1970s in blue-collar Baltimore City.
Diretha Victoria Hall, my mother, and Larry O’Neill Brown, Sr.
My father was a senior at Carver Vocational-Technical High School around the time I was born. He began his aspirations of becoming an artist by selecting commercial art as his trade, but after a few years of financial pressure and job prospect frustrations, my father made the decision to switch his area of study to printing. It was my father’s vocational training that eventually made it possible for him to transition into a job as a linotype operator at a few printing facilities in Baltimore. One of the Baltimore facilities was the Afro-American Newspaper. He was often the only person of color on the job working as a typesetter and linotype operator. He was later recruited by Baltimore City schools via a special workers equivalency program and transitioned into a career in vocational educa-
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painting in their home studios and talked about their art as if they were dreaming to make it big one day. That confusion even followed me from grade school through college. tion teaching printing in several area Baltimore City schools. In addition to his printing career, my father was also a championship wrestler, who later coached high school and college level wrestling, cross country, and track and field. I remember looking up to my father and wishing I had his talent and athletic abilities. He was a self-taught artist, and I grew up with his work all over the walls of our house. It was not uncommon for us to do small print jobs in our kitchen on a small platen printing press that he kept at the house. After a while I figured out that I actually liked printing. The only problem was I didn’t feel like my father wanted me imitating anything he was doing. It seemed no matter how much I tried to please him, I usually was criticized by him or ended up feeling rejected. It became apparent that much of this energy was because my father was a frustrated artist. There were few opportunities in those days for young black men to pursue art, or art careers. This was at the core of why my father shifted his area of study from art to printing. I’m sure these frustrations manifested in our creative interactions. Nonetheless, I decided at a young age that art was going to be my path. From as early as I can remember, art was a part of my life. Looking back, it was apparent from an early age the way art drew me in. It may have been because I was born the son of a teenage parent who sacrificed his dream of being an artist to take care of his family. I watched my father, not knowing what he was actually going through, try to paint. It was always a mystery to me what he was thinking? How was he feeling? Where was the imagery coming from? I attempted to try to do the things I saw my father doing. As a young child, all I could do was imitate, like most sons, who aspire to be like their father. My father, on the other hand, was a frustrated artist, which I think made him become a little competitive instead of nurturing. I also think it motivated him to deter me from that dream because in the 1960s and 1970s my father did not have the outlet to be a successful artist. At that same time, I experienced several opportunities to witness my father interacting with other notable Baltimore artists like Ernest Kromah, Robert Torrance, Thomas Stockett and various others. But something always seemed strange to me as a child. All of these wonderfully gifted black men were
Role Models and Mentors
After a while art became my silent friend. Being a loner and a middle child, who pretty much stayed to himself, it was so easy for me to time travel while drawing. It was a retreat for me. I drew Marvel comics, cartoons, or anything that I could identify with. As a child, I was a big fan of Batman, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Snoopy, and the Incredible Hulk. In my elementary school days, after my family’s last big move from East Baltimore to West Baltimore in 1970, I was befriended by my big brother from another mother, Eric G. Tombs (Ricky). Ricky had quite the sense of humor, which got us into several harmless fights. Ricky would tease me just like any older brother would, but the one thing Ricky never joked about was my art. As a matter of fact, he probably was the first person who made me take my art more seriously. We often would spend hours drawing comic book characters. Eric and his older brother had the largest Marvel comic book collection I had ever seen. This was way before television sets in every room, computers, and video games. He was the one person and friend that was curious about my artistic abilities regardless of what I felt about them. Friends often see potential in you, before you actually see it in yourself. My biggest memory from Liberty Elementary School was when one day my teacher asked everyone in the class to stand and say what they wanted to be when they grew up. Of course, we had a lot of lawyers, teachers, doctors, and an occasional astronaut. I stood up proudly and said, “I would like to either be a yellow school bus driver or an artist”. The room filled with laughter, as my teacher interrupted and said clearly “a bus driver is an honorable job.” I didn’t realize that the yellow school bus driver that passed me every day was driving a bus transporting challenged students. I just thought it would be cool to ride on the bus rather than walk to school. The most interesting distinction my teacher made was that an artist wasn’t even worth talking about. I thought the class was laughing at me because I said I wanted to be an artist. Of course, I sat down with much embarrassment and confusion.
Mr. David Humphreys was my art teacher at Garrison Junior High School, and he was the first adult to stare me in my face and say, “Son, you need to start taking your art more seriously. Mr. Humphreys began forging me to believe in my art. He would give me school assignments to do. We had many assemblies at school, so he would first get me to do full artistic backdrops for some of the assemblies. Then he assigned me to do bulletin boards in classrooms, decorate display cases, for upcoming holidays, and for classroom doors and hallway decorations. I had a few people who were pivotal in pushing me in a direction of making me see my art in a different capacity. I also began to participate in many local art competitions. I had plenty of opportunities to compete against other students, where I began to realize that I had more going for myself than I thought. It gave me a lot of confidence at a time when I had so many negative interactions in middle school. I think I began to see my classmates react to me in a different way because of my talent. By the time I got to senior high school, the way I was perceived by other students changed. I didn’t even realize that most of the bad experiences had disappeared. One, because I was so busy most of the time. Two, because I was beginning to blossom into really knowing who I was and answering those questions, “Who am I? Who do I want to be? Do I want to be my father and end up being a frustrated artist who has no real opportunity?” or “What do I want to be?” But at the same time, I had this ability that I still was keeping captive, and it wasn’t until I began to get opportunities being forced on me by teachers that I began to really grasp that I could do something larger
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