Paul Flack is one of the leading artists in the emerging Who Ha Da-Da movement of American Folk Art. Flack's art fuses urban, suburban and rural influences and combines them with spiritual overtones to create images that promise possibility despite challenging circumstances. Flack’s artistic style entirely reflects his mosaic-like life story.

Suburban Pioneer

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Paul Flack moved with his family to Levitown, Long Island, America’s first subdivision. Throughout his youth, Paul was attracted to drawing and painting, but his parents didn’t encourage his talents and he put any such interest aside. From his modest home on a 60’ x 100’ plot of land, he dreamed of life beyond the city and never missed an episode of “Modern Farmer,” a 6 AM Saturday morning homage to life the way it was supposed to be. Despite his rural daydreams, Flack was 14 years-old before he first experienced a cow up-close. It wasn’t until he was 18 that he finally broke out to the “country.” Eventually he made it to the environs of “up-state” New York where he lived on a 300-acre farm west of Schenectady.

Southerner by choice

As the 70’s were winding down, the South caught Flack’s attention. He soon found a home on what was then the outskirts of Atlanta. There, Flack’s career path wandered from international teaching, to marketing, sales, public relations and technology. Despite his many successes, his professional experience proved less than fulfilling. In the meantime, suburban sprawl began to overtake his neighborhood and he longed for the untainted, pure American ideals that seemed to be fading from his view.

Birth of the first South Brooklyn, suburban refugee folk artist

In the early 1990s, Flack attended a folk art exhibition for the first time. Folk Fest in Atlanta is billed as the world’s largest folk art show & sale, hosting 90 galleries & dealers from around the nation specializing in folk art. There he was introduced to the art of Robyn "The Beaver" Beverland. Flack was deeply impressed by what he viewed as “the unobstructed, pure, soul-bearing communion between the art and artist” that Beverland's art represented. He was equally inspired by the work of other visionary artists whose work was displayed – most notably, Reverend Howard Finster, who had risen to global fame through his art. Flack perceived a level of “truth” in these artists and their work which was not present in other aspects of his life. A potent combination of a deteriorating environment in his Atlanta community at the hands of real estate developers and severe personal health problems forced Flack to reexamine the “truth” in his own world. In an effort to come to grips with his new reality, he picked up discarded pieces of wood left in the wake of his new subdivision neighbors. Recalling his Folk Fest experience, Flack decided to try painting - something he had turned his back on thirty years before. He painted on the scraps of wood in an effort to reconcile his feelings. Flack became intrigued with spiritual concepts and began almost exclusively painting angels -- God's own messengers.

Why Angels?

Flack’s life was spared from a debilitating disease. A new understanding of service to God and others overwhelmed the philosophy of his second chance at life. What better way to communicate the presence of mankind’s hidden spiritual side than portraying the common denominator of the New Testament, the Old Testament and the Koran...angels!

Technique

Currently, Flack works with a variety of household tools such as used spray bottles, catsup containers, discarded toothbrushes and the like, to create images. A favorite medium of Flack’s is joint compound on OSB (Oriented Strand Board), sometimes inset with mirrors and other found objects.

More Flack

Paul Flack’s artwork is in the permanent collection of the Hurn Museum in Savannah, and was chosen for the theme of the 2006 Mennello Museum’s 5th Annual Orlando Folk Festival. He is invited every year to participate in the prestigious Fearrington Folk Art Show in North Carolina. And, Flack’s own work is now annually on display at Folk Fest in Atlanta – displayed alongside works by the artists who initially inspired him. His creations are included in major private folk art collections throughout the U.S. Most recently, Paul Flack co-founded The Who-Ha Da-Da Outsider Artists' Fellowship, a group of fifty practicing visual artists dedicated to promoting and sustaining the vernacular Southern visual art culture. Flack says of this effort, "In art history, we will be viewed in the same context as the "British Invasion" of the 60's was to Blues music. For the most part, we are not old, poor, uneducated or dead. We all have televisions and automobiles and have at least one foot in the global village. Yet, we are carrying out the traditions set forth by the pioneers of contemporary folk art movement. We are dedicated to the extremely accessible and affordable, highly creative, somewhat spiritual, often tongue-in-cheek visual art form." More about Flack and his art movement can be found at http://www.whohadada.com and at www.flackart.com