In his painting “The DJ,” yellow light from a single overhead bulb
bathes a slender figure who stands alone, eyes shut, one hand working
the controls while another — elongated, backlit, cinnamon-brown
— manipulates a vinyl LP on a turntable in a room packed,
floor-to-ceiling, with records. Popular in poster form, it’s the work
for which Justin BUA is best known, and it typifies the
Manhattan-born artist’s fascination with city life, hip-hop, and the
underground. The style he likes to call “Distorted Urban Realism”
permeates BUA’s new book, The Beat of Urban Art, which he
discusses at Moe’s Books (2476 Telegraph Ave., Berkeley) on
Tuesday, July 14. Further examples illustrate this narrative of his
life —from his 1968 birth “in NYC’s untamed Upper West Side”
through his years at the prestigious Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School
of Music and Performing Arts and into a burgeoning career in
illustration, music videos, and fine art.
“My mother and grandfather were both artists who had a great
appreciation for the visual arts,” explains BUA, who began drawing at
around age five. “Therefore art was around me all of the time. All
through my life I continued with my art — and even though I
became intensely absorbed in the hip-hop culture, with rap, breaking,
and graffiti, art was always the one constant in my life.” Honing his
graffiti skills on the exposed surfaces of New York City, he gained an
admiration for others in the field — “Doze, Twist, Revolt, and
Zephyr,” to name a few. He also performed widely with break-dancing
crews.
“Those activities actually inspired my paintings,” he remembers. But
so did the Old Masters and their modern counterparts, such as
Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Kathe Kollwitz, George Bellows, and
Honoré Daumier. “I also love the more contemporary American
illustrators like Dean Cornwell, N.C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, and J.C.
Lyendecker,” enthuses BUA, whose art adorns his own clothing line
Because of his penchant for rich colors and soft edges, “most people
make the assumption that I paint with oils,” BUA notes. Yet “the truth
is that I paint exclusively with acrylics.” He gives three reasons for
this: “I’m incredibly messy when I paint. I throw paint around the
studio like a madman and get it all over my clothes.” Acrylics, which
are water-based, can be laundered out. Moreover, “I find oils to be
toxic and a health hazard and acrylics to be the less hazardous of the
two.” Best of all for a man who loves fast beats, acrylics dry quickly.
Their only downside, BUA laments, “is that the colors of acrylics don’t
hold a candle to the colors of oil paints.” When you’re at the top of
your game, he explains, such drawbacks don’t much matter. “It’s not the
medium you use,” the artist asserts. “It’s you. There are a few artists
out there who use acrylics amazingly well: Sebastian Kruger, Ruben
Hickman, Barry Jackson. … There aren’t many, but the ones who use it
well — they’re amazing.”
