Christopher Maslow admits that by the age of 14, he realized that his dream of competing as a professional surfer and skateboarder probably wasn’t going to happen. So, he turned his sights toward the other thing he was good at: making art.
Maslow joins assemblage artist Joan Earnhart, sculptor Cliffton Chandler and collage artist Derek Gores at Visual Poetry, an exhibition of their work curated by Gores. The exhibit will be on display through Jan. 28 at Gallery 14 in historic downtown Vero Beach.
The 39-year-old recalls money being tight when he was young, so drawing and coloring – inexpensive undertakings – were two of his favorite pastimes, and he was also good at it.
“I was always talented in the arts. I used to win all the contests at school and things, but I didn’t really think too much of it,” he shares.
That all changed when Maslow discovered people at a company out of California who were drawing on surfboards with a type of paint marker from Japan. After he tried drawing on his friend’s surfboards, he was discovered one day by a local surfboard manufacturer and obtained his first real job as an artist.
Eventually, Maslow headed to California to study clothing manufacturing and graphic design at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. By then, he had also begun to experiment with different mediums, adding spray painting to his repertoire once he discovered graffiti art.
“I remember vividly, riding the train to downtown Los Angeles for the first time. When I rode by the L.A. riverbed, I saw that all the sidewalls were covered in graffiti. I’d never really seen any graffiti. I was pressed against the glass, enamored with all this graffiti I was seeing. I instantly became obsessed,” Maslow recalls.
It took some time, but he was eventually able to break into that art platform, which was a world into itself.
“It was a subculture. You had to know somebody to get involved. It changed my whole life,” he explains. He adds that it was through graffiti that he learned how to paint on a larger scale.
“The spray paint medium isn’t a medium that you can work small. I tried to paint on canvas, and it wasn’t working. So, I’d have to go find walls under the overpasses or walls in areas where I could have time alone to myself to experiment and practice with the spray cans and make some really crappy art as I developed my skills.”
As he continued to add new mediums and tools, Maslow says his work evolved to a “mixed media working art form.”
On a trip back to Florida one year, he discovered he could, in fact, make a living by painting large-scale murals. Inspired by surrealist artist Salvador Dali, Maslow attributes his use of different mediums and styles to “seeing the greatness of Dali,” and hopes to one day have his own works on museum walls.
“I have these massive paintings. I didn’t paint them with the intention of sale; I painted them to be hung in museums. Because I knew that if I wanted to have my work in a museum, I would have to get used to working on such a grand scale,” he says.
“There is a great sense of fulfillment that comes with painting a massive wall. It’s very physically taxing. I pretty much touched every inch of these huge walls; I’m working with gallons of paint and tons of spray cans. It’s physically challenging and rewarding. For a man who is not even 6 feet tall to paint a five-story building and step back and look at it and say, ‘I think it’s done,’ gives you an overwhelming sense of David slaying Goliath.”
Maslow has painted murals around the world, including for such clients as NASA, SpaceX and Starbucks. Closer to home, one of his colorful murals enhances the side of the United Against Poverty UP Center on 27th Street in downtown Vero Beach.
At one point Maslow started his own clothing company and eventually opened a retail storefront in downtown Melbourne that he used as a studio and gallery where he sold his clothing line and art supplies. Deciding to focus solely on his artwork and murals, he closed the shop and now works out of a 4,000-square-foot studio gallery in Melbourne.
“I’ve always been a self-taught fine artist. It really came initially through experimentation. I’d have friends in art school, and I’d always be looking over their shoulders, picking apart things they were doing that I could take away and use for my own,” he says.’
The works on display at Gallery 14 are part of a series he began painting 10 years ago. Using oil, acrylic and spray paint, Maslow says the style he has developed makes a still object appear as if it is in movement. He describes it as “still motion.”
“It was a cool way to capture something as if it was encapsulated in wet paint or covered in wet paint. And that momentum of it coming apart as it moves is something that I naturally leaned toward,” Maslow explains.
Whether the movement appears along busy streets, as in Maslow’s “Mainstreet,” the eruption of color in “Exploding Bouquet,” or in the thunder of hoofbeats in “Exploding Friesian Horse,” the motion is messy and chaotic, a little like life itself.
Maslow calls himself a painterly artist.
“A painter’s painter. I really gravitate toward photo-realism, but I am also best with abstract art. It wasn’t until I painted photorealistic portraits that I began to understand abstract art.
That was where the style was born, this explosive still-motion concept. I’m basically combining both realism and abstract work in a way that one doesn’t necessarily dominate the other. They work in harmony.”
For more information, visit gallery14verobeach.com.
Photos by Kaila Jones and provided
