VISUAL ARTS
BY MEERAH POWELL
PAINTING THE
GOOD
In an era of vitriolic hyperbole,
local artist Simon Graves focuses
on the positive
O
il paintings of Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson
Mandela, Frida Kahlo and Abraham Lincoln,
among others, lined the walls of downtown
Eugene’s Townshend’s Teahouse amidst the
chatter of conversation and the clinking of
ceramic mugs against tabletops.
These portraits are the work of Simon Graves, a Eugene
artist whose current oeuvre is focused on the importance of
the constructs of good and evil — and specifically the
characters we tend to conceive as being good on an iconic,
archetypal level.
Upon meeting Graves, I was unsurprised to find that he
is a very upbeat person, and rightfully so, as a lot of
positive life events have seemed to domino for him these
past few months.
Graves recently came out as gay, and his family and
friends offered a tremendous amount of support.
“I’ve been married for 26 years,” Graves says. “My
wife has been trying to get me out for the past 10 and my
kids have been trying to get me out, too.”
He adds, with a laugh: “And when I came out this past
December my family said, ‘It’s about f-ing time.’”
Surprisingly, though, it’s not the positive things that
inspired Graves to paint these iconic portraits, but the lack
thereof.
The idea for this series of paintings arose a few years
ago when Graves was having a conversation with a few of
his children’s college friends who stated that good and evil
are wholly subjective ideas, based on one’s own morals
and beliefs, not ideas that can be static and objective
constructs.
The students were in a class about relativism and made
the argument, Graves explains, that “good is a construct
that humans make. When an animal kills another animal,
it’s good for the one, but not the other. So, they kind of
cancel each other out — it’s a subjective thing.”
The conversation troubled Graves, who countered that
the construct of good is necessary in order for people to be
ARTIST SIMON GRAVES WITH HIS ‘CHIEF
JOSEPH’ AND ‘FRIDA KAHLO’ PORTRAITS
able to get along in a community. And so the 48-year-old
artist turned to his canvas to hash out his thoughts.
“I think that we know what is good; I think that we can
make that choice,” Graves says. “From the characters that
I’ve painted, we can see the good that they’ve done.”
Graves didn’t originally have
in mind a list of people he
wanted to paint, and in that
respect the portrait subjects
came to him naturally. “I think
that [the subjects] kind of picked
themselves in the sense of what
they’ve done in the world,”
Graves says.
Although he mostly painted portraits of figures who
were inspirational to him personally, Graves also asked
friends, family members and people at his day job — at
Eugene True Value Hardware — who they found to be
good influences as well.
“There are some in there that don’t necessarily fall into
the ‘good’ pattern per se,” Graves says. “I don’t really
know if Steve Buscemi would be considered that, but my
daughter really likes him, so I painted a picture of him, and
he used to be a fireman, so there you go,” he laughs.
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Graves began making art at a young age. He never took
any classes, but instead watched his mother paint regularly
as a child. He now paints in a small bedroom at home.
Graves also wrote and illustrated a children’s book —
Sylvan & Perry’s Tangle in the Cave — shown in the
Springfield City Hall gallery in
2014. Beyond that, Graves says
he’s relatively new to the Eugene
art scene.
And as for the notion of good
and evil being subjective
concepts, Graves believes that
this strong sense of subjectivism
can isolate people and also cause great cynicism.
Overcoming solipsistic views and realizing our inherent
similarities to other people — and the overall acceptance
that is gained from that — is one of the main goals in this
particular collection, Graves says.
“Because of our subjectiveness, we don’t realize how
much common ground we really have,” Graves says.
“When people realize how similar we all are, I think we’ll
be able to get along better.” ■
‘When people realize how
similar we all are, I think
we’ll be able to get along better.’
Simon Graves will show his work June 26-28 at The Wayward Lamb; 150 W.
Broadway.
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