Artist Longs for America's Noble Past

By Marsha Bolton

Daily News Staff Writer

Charlie Flagg might well be called an "exterior decorator," an ordinary title with an unusual twist.

The 53-year-old Darien man paints. What he paints - his subjects --- couldn't be more commonplace. In fact, he says he purposely appeals to average American people with his country scenes, lakes, mountains, valleys, forests and blue skies - a "sea to shining" effect.

Where Flagg paints is not so common. Barns, buildings, restaurants, living room walls, mostly in Western New York. Flagg paints murals, often using friends' and neighbors' leftover house paint.

"I'm decorating America's heartland," Flagg says quietly in an interview at the Genesee-Orleans Regional Arts Council Office in Batavia.

"Charlie Flagg's art is mostly about longing for a time when it was easier to think of America in noble terms," write folklorist Deborah H. Clover of Cortland in the "Arts and Community Pride" program that accompanies Flagg's work at the GO-ART! Gallery this month.

Flagg's display, located inside the East Main Street building, began July 15 and will run through August 31. The collection of "miniature murals" are mostly on canvas, but some are on saws.

The "where" of Flagg's outdoor murals is also unusual, Clover writes: "Murals are predominately an urban form of public art. Although you find one here and there outside of cities, they are not especially common in rural areas, and certainly not with the abundance found in the Genesee-Wyoming County region."

Flagg estimates he has painted almost 300 murals in New York, Virginia, Florida and Illinois. But most, he says, are in this region, especially Darien, Attica and Warsaw.

"You cannot drive around Western New York, haphazardly without coming or going by one of my paintings," he says. "I wasn't prepared to move to a city to become a painter, so I figured I might start just where I'm at. And that's what I've done. I've decorated Western New York."

The paintings in the GO-ART! Exhibit are representative of what Clover calls Flagg's "romanticized Americana themes." But even a few of those carry a twist, a political satire which characterizes Flagg's humor and life philosophy.

One of the paintings, called "the Sh** house" asked: "Bill How many "gates" will it take before you change houses?" It features an old fashioned outhouse in the foreground with the White House behind.

"It's not that I'm anti-law. I'm anti-stupidity, and it seems to be abundant in government," Flagg says.

Last August Flagg turned his unregistered 1982 Ford LTD into a "sculpture" by burying it part-way in his Tinkham Road yard. The vehicle was one of two unregistered vehicles on his property; the town only allows one. He is now being cited for change of land use without a permit.

"They had to look really deep for that one," Flagg says.

"It's a battle of wills. Basically when I did this I told the town fathers to stick it. And they don't like that because they believe that it undermines their authority. It wasn't done to undermine their authority. It was done as a symbol."

"It's lovely. The sun comes down and just reflects off the bumper. It's a shining beacon of hope." He laughs."A shining beacon of hope. I like that."

But mostly, Flagg sticks to more recognizable themes. Accessibility is a priority for him, he says, because there's "no point in making art that people can't afford or don't understand."

And where does this prolific painter turn for inspiration?

"I don't know," he says. "It's like me asking you "How do you write your name?" well, you could spend a half hour explaining it, but I still wouldn't know how you write your name. You just do it; "you just know. After so many, it's like writing your name."

DARIEN, NEW YORK

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