Diana Greene Winston-Salem Monthly February 2008 Artist in Residence: Mike Foley

Mike Foley believes in love. But don’t be fooled – as an artist, Foley isn’t after the rose-and-perfume kind of love. The greeting cards he creates express love that is more sassy than sentimental, more devilish than darling, more fun than a date when just the right number of rules got broken.

“Love is a beautiful thing, but there are gnarly parts to it. It’s like kids,” smiles the father of two small children, “they come with a little poop.” That duality, the open embrace of light and dark, forms the edge that inspires Foley’s art whether he’s making cards, short films, or photographs. The River Run promotional campaign he’s working on is based on his tagline “Meet You in the Dark,” which also reflects Foley’s drive to share the riches found when the lights go down.

Spinning through the racks of cards at the artist’s downtown Winston-Salem office, the smell of schmaltz is undetectable. His greetings convey a feral and funny frankness that’s original. Currently more than 100 stores in the U.S. and England carry his line of cards called, Random Cookie. I miss your stink, reads the text of a card featuring a black creature with one big eye, pink lips, boxy teeth, and a long tongue; open the card and the message continues, you are one wild flower.

As a writer, Foley’s a minimalist. His text is short, often tart, usually built upon the two-beat punch. “It’s a big hairy deal,” he writes; inside the fold are small, lowercase words: “celebrate accordingly!”

Snappy copy comes easily to Foley, who worked for years as an advertising creative director and still freelances today. “Words take me away,” he says. “They make you feel your heart race.” It is the images, however, that take Foley by surprise. A happy disbelief is detectable as Foley discusses his relatively new career as a visual artist.

“Ten years ago my wife gave me a box of paints,” he explains, “and one day, about four years ago, I woke up and started painting and went hog wild.” He studied with local folk artist, Sam “The Dot Man” McMillan, pastel artist, Bill Gramley, and others. Visual art “allowed me to be me,” he says.

Since that discovery, he’s created series after series of work with titles such as Valentine Orphans and Stork Droppings; he’s exhibited in local galleries, and occasionally sold out solo shows of his paintings. That he often stays up nights working, driving the quiet roads, soaking in the darkness that is his muse may account for his productivity. But, then again, there is also the napkin factor. Foley believes in them. Using Sharpies, he’s constantly sketching ideas on this approachable, affordable, and transportable material.

“I begin small,” he says. “I am always asking, ‘What can I really throw away from everything else? What’s the real concept?’”

Foley’s style is exuberant, elemental, a cross between folk art and cartoon. The creepy resides happily alongside the comedic. It’s no wonder Foley reveres former New Yorker cartoonists Edward Corey and Charles Adams. His paintings have a signature look that’s delightfully out of control. Colors are bright, shapes are bold, drips of acrylic paint flail and fling around the central figure which, whether animal or human, feature jumbles of teeth, hornish ears, and those whacky wide-open eyeballs made by every four-year-old learning how to draw.

His photographs use a different voice to evoke that exhilarating edge where dualities reside. These images contain a quiet painterly quality, thoughtfully rendered with a team of collaborators, including local photographer Brian Snipes. A portrait from his series, Flower Girlz, landed on a billboard recently when Foley and Snipes won the “Art in the Air” competition.

That photo shows a girl with long blonde bangs wearing a top hat; she looks slyly at the camera as she stands alone in Old Salem’s dusky cemetery. Against her black shirt she holds luminous yellow lilies and red tulips. The image contains beauty and darkness, youth and death, something innocent and dangerous.

“I’m just inspired by the dark,” Foley says. “When it’s dark you can see things lit up from inside. It’s quiet and the moon is out, the traffic and noise and people are gone. Things are lit from within and, in a sense, that scares you, but it’s really great, it’s just frigging it.”

www.mikefoleyart.com

When did you realize you would live a creative life?

It’s the only life I had.  I don’t even know if I could define it that way. I don’t think it’s conscious.

Where do you find your inspiration?

Unexpected times and places. On the road. Waking up in the middle of the night.

What do you do to overcome a creative block?

Just work through what sucks, and make it better. Sometimes you’re overdosing on it. It’s okay to take time off, to just be a dad, to just live, to go with it.

What do you think of failure?

I guess there’s no where to go but up.

What quality do you most admire in other artists?

Honesty. Being true to themselves. Originality on their journey to self-discovery. Whether it’s good or bad, I admire a person’s audacity to follow something that’s unique to them.

Which artists do you most admire?

Always Andy Warhol, the designer Charles Spencer Anderson, and Jack Kerouac.

What would surprise people about you?

To know that I like to cook.