Arthur Banach

“I paint rappers” That part is easy to share. “I love Hip Hop” That’s an expected side dish. The why is where the record gets warbled. I’ve always loved Hip Hop, but as I’ve taken to learning more about myself I’ve unearthed more tendons and scar tissue that run from my canvas to the speaker wire. I’ve always lived with anxiety and depression, but I only came to be friendly with these stowaway roommates when my Grandma died. This was when my subconscious, a junkie zooted off a quest for validation, hitched herself to my wagon. The only way I earned her friendship was through etchings of my favorite rappers whose bars I knew so well they were more meditative chant than ill rhyme. Drawing these rappers kept me sane and connected to a culture that made its brand on overcoming struggle and celebratory cookouts on blocks populated by early onset adversity. Rappers were heroes worthy of my persistent iconography and I took great care in honoring their visage. Form and tone took precedent to all other considerations. I’d often show these emcees my work. They loved it and it felt good. Then I started turning inward, and developing my negatives under the light of self-examination. Old traumas took their first steps in the present, and I spent more time alone with my colors, canvas, and rhyme. I paint differently with them in the room, I care less about realism and constantly question the emotion of my canvas. I treat rappers no longer as icons but as reflections of my own struggles with mental health. I take George Condo’s psychological cubism into account during the portrait’s construction, focusing on the energy of the rapper’s flow. My work is concerned with my own personal journey understanding my mental health, through the music of rappers who’ve laid their psyche out in surgical theatre. "It's my life It's my pain and my struggle The song that I sing to you it's my everything" - Hov