Abex and punk rock

John Czwartacki
4 days ago
2 min read

I see my painting the same way I used to listen to music—specifically, punk rock and alternative music

In high school, I used to write lyrics—really bad lyrics—to find a place to put feelings that had nowhere else to go. I would find kids who had similar spirits, and we’d soothe ourselves with the chords in Joy Division and The Smiths, sneaking cigarettes wondering “How Soon Is Now?” and if “Love Will Tear Us Apart.”

When I paint, I feel as if I am in a punk band. I mean no disrespect to actual musicians or people with talent and a passion for creating music. It’s just a freedom that puts a voice to the unseen.

Since I never went to art school or studied the mechanics of painting, I have no rules to hem me in, no structure to hold me back. I am just in conversation with the material. I let my music blast and channel my Totus copilot (don’t ask) as I excavate something deep.

Whether it’s a subversive feeling I had at 15 when I was working at Aboff’s Paint and Wallpaper, a suppressed scream from when I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and lost the vision in my left eye at 23, the peace and hope that washed over me when a new treatment finally got the upper hand on my MS at 28, or the big middle finger I gave to a twist of fate when my legs quit for good and I couldn’t work in a traditional office anymore at 50—I have a lifetime of raw material to draw from to fuel my passion.

It is a passion that I didn’t know would have an outlet until 2025. Not until I picked up a brush and my punk mindset finally—finally—had a place. Not of adolescent angry anarchy but of worn but unsurpassable resilience , sincere gratitude, and a pursuit of hope and joy.

I could oil painting now to undermine - like Johnny Rotten -& break what a “portrait” is supposed to be, or what a sunrise or sunset feels like. I can listen to an old Cure song, pour it onto a canvas, and call it “A Forest.” I can crank Echo & the Bunnymen and merge my adoration for Mark Rothko with the lyrically perfect “Killing Moon.”

My flow state of ideas seems almost bottomless. Honestly, when I’m adding up the sum total of an extraordinary life of brokenness and wholeness and exploring my faith and scripture, I find the most norm-breaking and revolutionary ideas. That is some CBGBs material right there.

It’s been a gift to put a lifetime of the most diverse experiences into a coherent language. The driving sound, the emotional and discordant lyrics, the flipped script of loving your enemies and radical mercy—all of it is coloring a mosh in my head and now pit on a canvas.