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Paul Mullins is a young artist who is just now being recognized. In January, 2000 he was one of three artists to be honored with an exhibition at the Concoran Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. In June, 2000, he had a solo show in Chicago and in spring 2001 he had another in Miami.
Mullins draws incessantly and paints when he can find time. His heavily worked and impastoed paintings are on wood panel. "Canvas," he says, "simply won't stand up to the paint."
Dynamic figure painting is enjoying a resurgence in contemporary fine art. One thinks immediately of the British School, Lucian Freud, Leon Kossoff, and Jenny Saville. But, to me, the low-life losers in Mullins' work, coupled with his sympathetic and sometimes humorous rendering of characteristic poses in the drawings, reminds me of the American Ashcan School from the early 1900s. Robert Henri's (1865-1929) acute observation of the anonymous working class comes to mind. One thinks of George Bellows' oil on canvas of 1904, "Stag at Sharkey's," not only for the subject matter but also in the paint application and the palette.
Boxers, bouncers, wrestlers and other would-be tough guys figure prominently in Mullins' work. They are the sparring partners at the gym, rather than the "contenders" who climb through the ropes under the lights in front of the crowd. They are the "has-beens" and the "never-was's" hoping to catch "the champ" with a good one and maybe the eye of the promoter.
"Most boxers come from abject poverty. They have a thorough understanding of violence," says Mullins. Prize fighting at the regional small time level, while not pretty, is even more dramatic than the big time in capturing mortal combat. The ring is a microcosm of unfettered brutality.
That is why prize fighting has been a source of fascination for contemporary writers as diverse as Hemmingway, Clifford Odets, Joyce Carol Oates and Norman Mailer. "It encompasses the whole drama," Mullins says, "one guy wins, the other guy gets beaten, humiliated, or worse."
The Carnegie Museum of Art has, in its permanent collection, a painting entitled "The Old King" (oil on canvas, 1934) by Georges Rouault (1871-1958). Like this world-famous painting of the world weary king, the bruised and lonely battlers in Mullins' work remind us of our own vulnerabilities. To me, they are metaphors for the human condition.
- Michael Berger
Essay by the Artist
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