Artist 'sees' sounds of blues

" So I'd find out what the ghosts were supposed to look like. Then when the older people would question me, well...I had a way of telling stories. "

By Heather Gates

George Hunt came into this world with a gift for seeing things a bit differently or, perhaps more appropriately, things that were a bit different. He arrived in the middle of a Louisiana sugarcane field, where his great-grandmother delivered him while his father stood nearby.

There, Hunt was born with a "veil," or double membrane over his newborn body, which, according to family folklore, empowered him with the ability to see the supernatural.

As the young Hunt grew, so did his stories about the ghosts.

"I'd hear the old people talking about the ghosts that I was supposed to see," Hunt says after a good-natured laugh. "So I'd find out what the ghosts were supposed to look like. Then when the older people would question me, well...I had a way of telling stories."

Although, the 57-year-old Memphis artist never saw anything spooky as a child, he came to see something else through a special "veil." Colors. Today, Hunt's artwork hangs in local shops like Gestine's Gallery on Beale Street and is seen the world-over.

For the past six years, he's created the fine arts prints for the Beale Street Music Festival, which is also imprinted on T-shirts, and reproduced into posters and most anything else, in an effort to publicize the annual event held during the first weekend of Memphis in May.

"The colors that I see are bright," Hunt says. "They remind me of my early childhood, when I would go to church and see the women. The purple, yellow and red hats, their colorful pocketbooks. The men were usually staid, but the ladies were 'out there.'"

The world around him was just as brilliant. "The sky is always very beautiful. And there's nothing prettier than a field of corn, the beauty of a tomato, even a sweet potato is good-looking to me. Mash a dewberry or blackberry and you'll see a rich violet.

"I see all these colors," the salt and pepper-haired Hunt says, "and I remember them."

Hunt, who's also taught art for 27 years at Carver High School, "sees" sounds as well. To him, the blues is an "earthy" music, yet also full of joy. "It's medicine for the soul, for the spiritual soul," he says.

While some criticize Hunt's work for depicting his subjects in an unflattering light, he says he's merely trying to capture an essence. "I'm not trying to reproduce an exact likeness. I see distortion (in blues music), altered notes and sounds. So I try to alter features to coincide with the impression or expression."

Upon gazing at his work hanging along a local gallery's wall, one quickly notices how vibrant, rich and captivating it is indeed. Hunt uses acrylics and, true to his signature style, often textures his vibrant work with cut canvas strips or locally found items.

As Hunt explains his technique to visitors, he touches his print for the 1997 Blues Fest like it's an old friend. While admirers of his art stand within a safe distance, he gets right up to it and rubs his hands over the painted canvas.

"This here I found at a garage sale," Hunt says as he points to an old flowered garter used for a subject's hair decoration in the '97 Blues Fest print.

Another print depicts a Napoleon look-alike, guitar in hand, strumming the blues. The idea for the caricature came to him when the Napoleon exhibit appeared in Memphis in 1993.

"I thought if Napoleon were alive and on Beale Street today, he'd probably get too drunk and embarrass his lieutenants. So they'd escort him out of a club, but he'd leave his hat and jacket behind and somebody would pick it up and put it on and start playing the blues."

Other prints hanging along the gallery wall depict women and children, subjects that are familiar to him. "Women have always been very influential in my life. In fact, I've never been too keen on men," Hunt says.

He was, after all, raised by his single mother, a grandmother and great-grandmother. It was his sixth-grade teacher, Annie Banks, who discouraged the young Hunt from drawing pornographic pictures for his friends, and to pursue a more honorable venture as the class artist for bulletin boards. (He got 25 cents per picture for drawing his customers in "compromising positions" with female classmates.)

"Miss Banks told me that I had a talent and a skill and that I was using it in the wrong way. She said if I continue to use it in this way, I'd lose it, and I didn't want to do that," Hunt says. He also prefers painting indoor scenes, and always strives to make them "relevant" to a real-life situation.

"If you go to an average blues concert and it's indoors, it's mostly African-American people. If it's outdoors, it's mostly European-American people," Hunt says. "I think it's a psychological thing.

"My thing is, I hated to be outdoors because I associate it with working in the sun. That was traumatizing to me. "

Although he says that the "psychological ramifications" of his work are strictly his own opinion, it is his art that exposes new ideas and hopefully new perspectives. Art is not a mystery, he says, nor should it ever be.

"Not everyoneis meant to be a visual artist, but everyone can appreciate and understand the arts. No matter what your forté is in life, you can be creative," he says.

And, he adds, "I'm not gifted. I'm just a person who sees things and interprets them." From sugarcane to fine art and Beale Street, Hunt still sees vibrant visions through his colored veil.