FOREVER BEGINS: TAHA CLAYTON

Words by Michael A. Gonzales | Images by Akintola Hanif

Dressed in black boots, jeans and an applejack hat, Toronto native Taha Clayton guides me up the dusty staircase that leads to his art studio in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. A former crack house, he is currently renovating the space alongside fellow artist and girlfriend Manivone. Entering the room, one can feel the creative energy that has replaced the stench of rock cocaine.

After popping a few cans of Bud and setting up a Dilla soundtrack on the computer, Taha modestly shows me a few of his canvases. “I’ve lived in New York for four years, but I haven’t shown my work much,” he confesses. “Instead of trying to get a dealer or a gallery interested, I’ve spent the last few years trying to develop my style.”

“Some people think because they do well in other places, that they’re just going to come to New York and takeover, but it doesn’t usually happen that way. After the city slaps them in the face, they run back home. I didn’t want to be one of those people,” says Taha, 29.

Bent down to avoid bumping our heads on the low ceiling, I move across the room and stare for a few moments at the striking self-portrait propped against the wall. Inspired by a friend’s photo snapped inside this same room last year while Taha was listening to Neil Young on the record player and sipping a Brooklyn Lager, he recontextualized the image.

“I like working from photo references and have built a large inventory of images,” he says. “I wanted to do this particular painting, because in ten years when I’m working in a new studio, I’d like to look back at this funky space with the falling ceiling and remember where it all started.”

Taha’s work combines an arsenal of influences including the music of MF Doom and Duke Ellington, the paintings of Caravaggio and John William Waterhouse, the mysticism of fairy tales and myths. “When I’m painting I see myself as a storyteller constructing a visual tale,’’ he explains. “For me, it’s about translating different mediums into the work while trying to create something visually exciting. You could say I’m trying to write a book about my experiences, my desires using these pictures.”

While Taha doodled as a child, going through a grade school era that future art historians might refer to as his “raccoon period,” he didn’t get into the art seriously until much later. “When I was a kid, my only interests were sports,” he recalls. “Baseball, basketball, soccer. Drawing was just something to do when I was bored or needed something to do. I guess you could say I starting doing it first and became passionate about it much later.”

After Taha’s sister introduced him to local artist Sean Downing, he realized that it was possible to make the leap from his bedroom redrawing album covers by the Notorious B.I.G. and Black Star to being a real painter. “My problem was I had seen books about the great masters, but I didn’t know where to start. Meeting Sean made me realize, this could be done for real.” Although Taha never went to art school, he learned a lot from a group of teenaged artists he hung-out with at a community arts program when he was 21.

“I was older then them, but I learned a lot,” he says. “At that point I was just really learning how to draw and paint, I wasn’t trying to do anything magical.” A portrait of Erykah Badu was his first completed painting. “In my work, I’m striving for realness; some artists want to keep painting biblical pictures the way they did 300 years ago, but I’d rather use the crackhead on the corner or my own mother for a subject. To me, that’s real.”

Finally ready to start showing his art, Taha was in a small group show in April at the Hudson Hotel and plans to be more aggressive in marketing his work this year. “If its one thing I learned from hip-hop guys like Jay-Z, it’s the art of the hustle,” Taha explains. “It’s not just about just being talented, but your business has to be right. At the same time, as an artist, I’m not going to drive myself crazy trying to be perfect, because I’m always evolving, always growing and constantly searching.”