Paxton Mobley has gone a step beyond the surreal in his paintings and as a result has coined a new word in the art world- Midrealist. Paxton, as he is known, always considered himself a Surrealist until after much study and writing when he characterized major differences in his work.
He says, "A Surrealist is an artist who searches for the future resolution of the two states of reality and being, the dream and the wake world. The Midrealist viewpoint is that there is an opposing reality past the dream world. This is more of a metaphysical existence. While the Surrealist was searching for the resolution of dream and reality, a Midrealist believes that the resolution of the physical and metaphysical world is found in the dream world, or mid-reality. Andre Breton, the founder of Surrealism, did not associate his movement with any sort of spiritualism. On the other hand, Midrealism is based on a kind of spiritualism- stemming from tenth dimensional theology.”
Although Paxton can explain the philosophy behind his work, he never explains his paintings. Working Women’s Shoes is simply described as set in a desert landscape. The moon is maroon colored, on the opposite side, there is an image of Saturn breaking up into tiny balls, and then, in the middle of the painting, four different laughing Picasso faces float in he sky. In the foreground there are two women in green c1oaks- one is breast-feeding and one is peeling potatoes- with a pair of red high-heel shoes by the table.
There are some commonalities in Paxton’s work. The vivid colors and the nontraditional use of oil paints are two. As part of his subject matter, the flat open desert landscapes with a particular background rock formation and a moon that looks like a broken piece of molded cheese are used in many of his paintings. This gives him a basic formula in which his strange images can exist.
Where do these images come from? Sometimes Paxton paints "Strictly from dreams. Either the story-line of a dream in a painting or I recopy the image of a painting I have produced within my dream.” He records almost all his dream images on a tape recorder immediately upon awakening, never describing what they mean but rather the remembrances of what happened. They are then sketched into a book. "Since I've been doing this, I've had more strange dreams,” he confides. He is not sure whether the painting feeds the dreams or the dreams feed the painting. Continuing, this is “a natural flow through the reality loop" and contrary to what some might feel after viewing his work, there is "no association with mind-altering drugs." He doesn't smoke, drink, or use any drugs.
At other times, Paxton reveals, “I see an image- it could be simply a tire or a tree- and interpret it into a different light. That image ends up creating an entire painting.” The third way his paintings come into being occurs when he just takes one strange image, starts sketching and lets his mind fills in subconsciously, “I let my mind work.”
The Surrealists Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, and Max Ernst have influenced this young artist. At the age of 24, his art is being received better than expected in today's market. He credits moving to California immediately after college as having been extremely beneficial.
Paxton grew up in northern Alabama in a little rural neighborhood near the Elk River. He offers no name for this tiny enclave, rather describing it as a place where "middle class hippies" resided, "people with good minds"- artists and professors. His grandmother was a painter and his mother is a stained glass artist. He earned his baccalaureate with a dual major in studio art and art history at Queens College in Charlotte, North Carolina. Although he knew art would always be something he would do, there was the option of pursuing a career in tennis. Having played since the age of five and achieving the highest ranking in the Men's Southern Open, Paxton attended college on both a tennis and art scholarship. But at college he realized his life was art. He explored every medium but delayed working with oils until the age of 19. Today, oils are his main medium although some new pieces have been done in pastels, pen and ink, and watercolors. In addition, Paxton is involved with sculpture.
For about a year, Paxton did live the life of a starving artist. A diet consisting mainly of carrots, peanut butter, and tea even transcended onto the canvas. Critics were continually analyzing the carrots that kept reappearing, giving them phallic and other psychological interpretations. Paxton admits the carrots were merely readily available subject matter as they were one of the few things on the table.
Horizons brightened in 1993 with his first one-man show titled "America's New Surrealist" at San Francisco's Trojanowska Gallery. In 1994, his one-man exhibit at the Three Spirits Gallery in Pacific Grove, dubbed The World's First Midrealist, brought even more success. The title Odd jobs along the way have paid the rent on his place in Monterey. He worked part time at an historic museum and also waited tables. Now he works, usually three days a week, as an artifacts specialist for the city of Monterey. The flexible schedule leaves him evenings free to paint on those days while allowing him four days a week to paint day and night.
Paxton is busy painting and completing two sculptures for Artexpo in March where he plans on featuring four sculptures and about twelve paintings with Carolyn Ackerman.
