Todd Drake

“Growing up in the American South filled with its cultural undercurrents of Racism and conservatism, the youngest son of a twice widowed mother, I needed a compass, a North Star, that spoke intuitively to who I was inside and what I wanted to be. I first found that in the concept of serving others,” begins Todd Drake, a printmaker, activist, and educator living in New York City. Todd dedicated his undergraduate college degree to pursuing the pre-med path of a Biology degree. In his senior year of college, he rediscovered his talents as an artist. These skills had matured over the years and gave him the giant question of answering their call, or not. After two years of medical school, Todd could no longer ignore the artist inside himself: he resigned and headed to a Master Degree in Fine Arts program. 

“Ever since, I have never, ever, regretted leaving the field of medicine,” says the printmaker. However, he has always searched for ways to help others through his art-making practice. This search has led Todd on incredible journeys; trips into the deserts of Saudi Arabia, schools and homes in Palestine, Turkey, and rural Mexico. He comments; “It has shaped my life and that of my family”. 

One of the influences behind Todd’s art is the trauma of losing loved ones early in his life. This has led him to appreciate the art of the American landscape painter, Andrew Wyeth; “His melancholy infused paintings of the land and people in his life were shaped by the loss of his father, an experience I shared in common with him”. Years later, during his MFA program, Todd discovered Max Bechmann, the German Expressionist, whose world view and art was changed by World War I; “The experience of being an ambulance driver in that war had almost broken him, but expressing his inner trauma through his art saved him, only to make him the enemy of the Third Reich. Max escaped to the US and eventually settled in New York City.” More recently, Louis Bourgeois has deeply expanded his visual and emotional vocabulary with the power of her surrealism – particularly her early paintings. “I recently found where she lived while she made those works, just blocks away from where I now live in Manhattan,” states Todd.

Photo by AJ Stetson

Photo by AJ Stetson

“The first step of my art making process begins with an aching over something I need to express- often  larger social issues that also have some connection to my personal life,” describes the artist. His more recent subject matter has ranged from global warming to, undocumented immigration, and the covid pandemic. He then begins roughly drawing out the concept in sketches that he describes as; “a conversation with myself, an effort to put on paper what I am feeling inside”. Sometimes this comes easily, sometimes it takes many revisions, but once he has worked out the composition and clearly and simply communicated the feeling, Todd then moves into creating the linocut. This then becomes another discovery process where light, black and white line cutting, energy levels, and textures are all considered. He uses battleship gray linoleum to create the linocut, and prints using rubber based ink on thin French Press paper that responds well to wheat pasting. Todd then prints using either a lightweight cold press roller or a Vandercook press for larger editions.

Photo by AJ Stetson

Photo by AJ Stetson

During the Covid Pandemic Todd and his wife stayed in New York City to help save a communal house that they manage. Todd tells us; “For those years we lived on the edge of a volcano, as all around us people fled the city or came down with life threatening cases of Covid. The hospital a block away from our house put in hundreds of Covid rooms with negative pressure vents visible at each window. On the sidewalk they set up a refrigerated container morgue. The nights were filled with ambulance sirens and the streets by day were empty. My wife and I walked those streets and spent our time looking at graffiti and boarded up storefronts.” He began adding his prints to those boarded up windows and doors, and has continued on to participate in the now reborn, vibrant, and growing graffiti culture in New York City. “My most loved image is still the wounded face that for me is both a self portrait and a mascot for these times,” says the printmaker.

Looking to the future Todd is keen to have his images more widely shared; “I would love to wheat paste all around the world and I have created an “indoor-ready” series of prints and paintings on Global Warming that I would like to travel nationally and internationally.” The artist is also working on a new series addressing White Supremacy; “I have lived full-time off this type exhibiting in the past, and I am eager to do so again. I love the mixture of printing and displaying in non-traditional venues because it is so anti-elitist and circumvents agism. (No one knows how old you are as an anonymous graffiti artist! I am 35, on the inside.)” 

He continues, honestly; “I would also love to see my work in some kick ass nice white box galleries and museums. Not for the status of it, but for the opportunity to share my art. Museums in particular put the audience in a special state of mind where they are ready to think and feel deeply.” 

“All in all, I hope my work can continue to pass along small compasses and North stars.” 

@equalist_nyc
www.the-equalist.com

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