New Mexico Eccentrics

The Surreal Folk Art of Eric Luplow

By Brian D’Ambrosio

Sometimes art is a stroke of luck. Indeed, that is part of the appeal of artist Eric Luplow, a watercolorist who blends the bizarre features of surrealism with the colorful simplicity of folk art. It’s not something, in his words, “to be sweating about.” Provide him a sketch book and paint brushes, and he’ll unleash his imagination. The results will invariably be whimsical, witty, and mind-curving, in sync with his personality.

“I sketched a guy writing a song once, and I tried to do a guitar and make it perfect,” Luplow said. “I struggled whether it was a Gibson or a Les Paul. But then I realized that you don’t have to make it perfect because no one else really cares. Acoustic or Tele Neck? Why waste hours on it?”

Luplow’s style, which he calls “sur-folk,” blends edgy surrealism with folk art’s minimalism and saturated colors. It’s a genre that isn’t easy to characterize but is reminiscent of works by Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991), who Luplow cites as his biggest influence. His process is guided by inquisitiveness, and it all starts in one of the countless sketch pads he has filled with a variety of concepts:buffalo, barbecue ribs, steers, skeletons,ravens, roses, tractors, campers, animals, guitars, and accordions, to name a few. His fantasy fuels ours one grin and wink at a time.

“I can’t take myself seriously,” he said. “After I started doing art full-time, my girl started introducing me as an artist, and I just giggled. I was at the Red River Songwriters’ Festival and painted a raven and a guitar case with 100 stickers, mostly radio stations I grew up with (in Upstate New York) and Austin stations.”

Luplow application of color is often determined by his observance of it, like the burning red and orangeskies enveloping his home and studio in the Truches area in August, and the freshgreen peeking up from the ground in the spring.

“You have to be open to seeing things,” Luplow said.“Some drawings see the light of day, some don’t. But at least you got them down.”

Art has played many roles in Luplow’s life - companion, crutch, diversion, leisure pursuit, and even savior. He was the product of a difficult child birth in which both he and his mother nearly died. When he was4 years old, he suffered a severe head injury. The family was renovating their house when Luplow escaped from his playpen, climbed a ladder in the garage, and was found bloody and unconscious after he fell.

“After that I hardly talked and had a speech impediment,” he said.“I was not a good writer or reader. Class lessons would start, and I would just draw. That’s why art is like breathing to me.”

Twisting Wires, Mounting Ladders

As a young adult, Luplow worked on an assembly line at Eastman Kodak in Rochester, N.Y., packaging and wrapping film cartridges before embarking on a career as an industrial electrician.

Luplow started traveling to Kerrville, Texas, in the late 70s,where he became a resident electrician at the much-vaunted Kerrville Folk Festival. He would work all day, and listen to the music all night. That’s where he met his future wife, Peg. Soon he was living in Austin with her and showing his art in the galleries there. By the late 1980s, he even had a few collectors who took to his oddly likeable adventures.

Yet, he was still living the life of the journeyman electrician: getting on the road and working a job; painting from a small, confined place, like the rear of a Toyota pickup or an apartment studio when he was lucky; then going back to work again;then getting laid off again, collecting unemployment for a while, and then following the money around once again.

When Hurricane Katrina walloped the South in 2005, Luplow traveled to Mississippi to help restore the power grid in affected communities. In his down time, he would draw or talk about his art, and some of the other guys on the crew would rib him about how it was the very first time that they’d ever met “a real artist.” Then he would go back to work twisting wires, daydreaming about his next fantastic scene.

His life was an endless cycle of interstates, short-term assignments, sleeping bags, and, during better times,a few mattresses. About 10 years ago, his wife told him that he was growing too old to be climbing ladders and that he was going to be an artist. Since then, she has served as his business brain and most beloved backer.

Surreal Folk Art Flows

Peg Luplow encouraged her husband to purchase better quality paper and paints and to become more courageous and self-confident in his art. Indeed, his art is only increasing in creativity, bravado and its ability to stimulate imaginations. Part pop culture, part pulp era, and part old-time newspaper comic serial, his sur-folk art embodies the unbounded capacity of the self-taught outsider artist. He can create a piece of great escapism or a great imaginary world with the humblest sincerity. He has sketched and painted images that have been used as CD covers; his drawings were included in a scene in the 2001 movie Spy Kids; and he has created massive murals in Buffalo, N.Y., and in the Valley International Airport in Harlingen, Texas.

Powered by an energetic excitement to create, before Luplow is done with one drawing, he is usually thinking about doing another that is completely different. One piece in particular seems to encapsulate all that he is. It depicts an old cowboy in Truches, and it is a madly fanciful serving of visuals –piano keys, accordions, squeezeboxes, guitars - rooted in Luplow’s appreciation for music and musicians but overlapped with a dreamlike perspective.

“The folksy part is real life and the cool dimensions and angles provide the wild look,” said Luplow. “But the biggest beauty in a painting is to make someone think. Whether they buy it or not is not important.”

(Brian D’Ambrosio is at work on his next book, a compilation of New Mexico Eccentrics.)