Artist: Wes Freed

Title: Drive-by Truckers "Darkened Flags Tour"

Medium: Poster

Art Dimensions: 18 H x 12 Winches

Framed Dimensions: 19 H x 13 Winches

Item Description: Purchased from the DBT merchandise booth at the January 26, 2017 concert at the Ryman Theater in Nashville, TN. There were a limited number at each tour stop that were signed by the band. This is one of them. Framed.


ARTIST BIO:

Visual artist, writer, musician and actor Wes Freed is a Southern Gothic multi-disciplinary wonder of sorts. His work overlaps to such an extent he almost sings his paintings and paints his songs. Freed himself, his wife and long-time collaborator Jyl, his truck and his home studio all seem to overlap with it as well. All are best described as looking like live people, places and things from Crow Holler, the setting for most of his work.

Crow Holler is a world built from memory and memory of memory. In all of the forms Freed's art takes, its' corners and crevices are exposed, piece by piece. As this occurs, an anticipatory peace emerges. A one-eyed owl hovers on the edge of an eerie landscape. Withered trees scratch a lonesome Moon. You have the sense, as you look and listen, that something surprising is just around the corner. Smiling sirens beckon, hint that you should come closer; their moon-round eyes all aglow. Faceless men linger on lonesome roads, creep out of dark caverns, waiting, expecting.

You feel they look back at you. Their expressions have an effect similar to that of Goya’s portraits; their glances suggest secrets, possibly profound ones. Here, a pipe-smoking skeleton grins, leans in to tell an ancient tale. There, women with their souls in their eyes wait for you with half-hidden smiles. The images and words that emerge from Freed's inner world are haunting. Once you have seen and heard Dixie Butcher, Cecil Lone Eye, the Conjure Man or any of the other Crow Holler folk, you find you can leave them for as long you like but neither they nor the place quite leaves you.

It's familiar, comfortable but also foreboding. Some of the people and places are just shadows. Some are skeletal. Others burst with life. "We've found it! Come in! Come see! Here! It's right over here!", the people and creatures who live there all seem to say. You feel the "It" they speak of is something you’ll recognize the second you see it. “It” is something you wanted so badly you hid it far, far way long ago. "It" vanished in the material world but hasn’t gone away here. No, in Crow Holler you find it again, tucked in a corner of the world of dreams where it’s almost always autumn. There air is thick with the odor of hay and spilled gasoline.

Crow Holler is, in part, a re-creation of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, where Freed spent his childhood. He described it as a place, "full of old dirt roads, straggling trees on hillsides; corroded by time and progress." He left the Valley for Richmond's Virginia Commonwealth University, where he received a degree in painting and printmaking.

Like Chagall, he never returned to the place that his work often reflects wistfully but his memories permeate his work. Best known for his album and poster art for the Drive-by Truckers, Wes Freed is not only a visual artist and actor, (cult classics, 'Thrillbillies' and 'Degenerates Ink', both written for Wes and directed by Jim Stramel), but he's a singer/songwriter as well with a new band, The Magnificent Bastards. He talked with me about his film, art and music in a series of conversations a while back.

Source: https://www.gratefulweb.com/articles/grateful-web-interview-w-drive-truckers-artist-wes-freed

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