Thomas Christopher Haag
Thomas Christopher Haag was born in Wichita, Kansas into a family as vast as the sea. He took chemistry and math classes for some reason at the University of Kansas and then dropped out and started hitchhiking. He has lived in Southern Mexico, Switzerland, India, Spain, the Pacific Northwest, New Mexico, and now California.
An avid muralist, both commissioned and not, he has painted buildings in Oaxaca, Barcelona, Venice, Albuquerque, Varinasi, Bangkok, Rangoon, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Oakland, and many other places, under the names “detach”, “stove”, and “el pituitario”.
Using “reclaimed” latex house paint taken from chemical disposal facilities, found wood, and discarded books, he constructs multi-layered, collaged paintings and assemblages which include tiny drawings and lines of poetry. Haag’s paintings reference ancient cultures and spiritual traditions, but with just a hint of smart-ass. They are homages to criminal saints, a bodhisattva telling a fart joke, for example- events of divine banality and cosmic significance, stripped of pretense or stuffed with it. Either way, it is all “holy shit.”
