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Elbow-Toe is a Brooklyn-based street artist.
Caged, 2007. Charcoal and acrylic paint on craft paper and glassine pasted on wall, 9 feet x 9 feet. Courtesy of guy on the streets.I love the city, for many of the same reasons I love nature. There is a quiet to it when you really let go. When it is quiet I can see through the visual chaos and find amazing beauty. For several years now I have been working with the energy provided by the urban environment to open my creativity to chance and give a context to my art.
What I find most inspiring about street art is that every piece is an experiment. The moment one goes out to create apiece, all control is gone. This is because every surface, environment, and situation defies me, and I have to improvise with the moment. Even in the simple process of affixing paper to walls and buildings with wheat paste, I have to orchestrate my actions with the wind and the surfaces I am collaging. After this process the piece has a life of its own that could never happen in my studio. Just after the piece has been installed, I experience the most "perfect," and perhaps, the most sanitary moment that the piece will ever have. Afterwards, the piece may be ripped down, eroded by wind and rain, or covered by other street art and tags. This is where the real beauty begins to emerge.
My work on the street falls into two main veins. I am a trained painter and printmaker. I create very large figurative woodcuts, drawings, and paintings on paper, which I then paste onto buildings and other outdoor surfaces. I have a penchant for distortion and gesture, which I use to emphasize the emotions of the characters I depict. I find the urban setting the ideal space for them to inhabit. The rough surfaces provided by the city create the perfect counterpoint to the intricate line work of my drawing style. I am also prone to nostalgia and introspection. I make texts that are usually situational, at times confessional. I occasionally present them in conjunction with freehand drawings, many of which are based on my observations from the subway. I leave little poems and thoughts around for people to stumble across, preferably on doors. My goal with these pieces is to convey the reality of being human. These thoughts are not just about myself, but about us all.
My gallery work, though inspired by what I have learned working on the street, is not street art. It is made to be sold, and thereby made to be archival. Even though this work depicts the same kind of imagery, it is extremely different than my work on the street.
