Reinhard Straub in front of one of his paintings at his Carolina studio.

 By JON GIBBS

CAROLINA–Some people get to crawl up close to the Great Abyss and come back to tell of it. The ones who can best describe what they saw there: the shades and nuance of darkness, the textures and the feeling of terror, dread and horror – all mixed up with Truth, we call artists. The very best of those artists leave just enough out of their vision to allow us to get involved with it and make our own interpretation.  
 Meet Reinhard Straub. He is a fifty-nine-year-old bundle of talents, experiences and occupations that would ordinarily be parceled out to a committee of people, not one sole individual. Put another way: If he were a literal, not a figurative, ball of yarn, it would take a quartet of cats all of their combined lifetimes to unravel him. He is a fascinating mix of therapist, musician and artist. And while the term “Renaissance Man” gets tossed around a lot, most of the time it is applied to people who do a lot of things but do none of them particularly well. Straub, however, does the things he does very well. It just has not been an easy, or particularly direct, route in getting the recognition he has begun to receive. And that recognition is about to be doled out with a grand opening at his studio in Carolina on Oct. 4 and following that, at the HopArts studio tour on Oct. 17 and 18.

Born in Austria to an Austrian mother and a German-born father who left Hungary a few steps ahead of the Russian Army following World War II, Straub emigrated to the United States with his family in 1952, settling in Burlington, Vt. With a heavy dose of classical and gypsy music playing in the house, it is no wonder Straub settled on violin as his instrument of choice, and he received classical training on the instrument, as was the tradition in families of European descent. He led an otherwise American upbringing and went to Syracuse University.
Then came the 1960s and all of the possible sidetracks of that era. Straub took his musical background and applied it to the burgeoning music scene in upstate New York by becoming one of the first to electrify the violin. He joined a band, called Wail, that toured with and opened for Aerosmith and he was on his way, living the life of a professional musician and artist, someone who played and partied with some of the major heavy hitters of that era. He toured the East Coast and composed, collaborated and performed with the likes of Harry Nilsson, screenwriter Terry Southern, Paul Butterfield, Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones and Steven Tyler. He discovered that he had a talent for painting and a muse that drew him toward the darkness, a darkness fueled by some of the same influences that took down many musicians and artists of that era.
By the mid-80s, Straub was well entrenched in the Manhattan art and music scene, and he had the backing of a high-powered, influential mentor in the editor of Art Forum magazine, John Coplans.  His subject matter tended to be, as it is now, of terrifying insectivorous creatures of alien origin and inanimate objects involved in predatory activities. One could safely say he was a Creator Emeritus of the School of Atavism. “I was considering going to art school,” Straub recalls, “but when I asked John about it, he said, ‘Don’t go, it’ll ruin what you do. You already have your own unique sensibility and style,’ and he was right.”  
In 1987, Straub, along with a number of artists who also played music (including Wood, whose work has long been recognized in the art world) was scheduled to participate in a major New York show. But, again, Straub’s path took another turn, this time toward the light as opposed to away from it. He began the lifelong process of removing substances and made a life and career move that took him away from art – for a while – and toward his second career as a substance abuse and mental health counselor, which he began in 1989. He got a Masters in Social Work from Adelphi University and has been working in the field ever since. He currently runs a private practice in counseling and treatment with offices in Wakefield and Groton, Ct., in addition to serving with Mike and Betty Blackburn of Warwick on the staff of Treatment Solutions Network, a nationally-based company that pairs people in need of drug and alcohol treatment with the appropriate facility. “We find ways to guide the patient through the quagmire of red tape and allow them to get them the access to the treatment that will actually give them their best shot at sobriety,” he says.
There was this other part of Straub that was living within his psyche, almost like an unborn twin attached to his body under his therapist suit. His art, driven by his own particularly acerbic vision of modern reality, this brainchild of that twin, was waiting to be released into the light of day. And like the other events that drove Straub’s life, it took a brush with the darkest of darkness – death its own bad self – to deliver it. In May 1991, he was in a small plane piloted by his father, Walter, with a girlfriend who later became his wife, near Lake Champlain in Shelburne, Vt. The plane crashed upon takeoff, and his father did not get out of the plane. Straub and his girlfriend escaped, although he was burned badly on his right side. “The plane blew up just as we got out, and I watched my father burn to death,” he says, “it was horrific.”
This close-up, Technicolor brush with death, needless to say, shook Straub’s belief system to the core and completely. A Universe that had at one moment been shining down on a sober, responsible and productive member of society, someone who was out there helping people, for God’s sake, suddenly seemed to turn its back on him as if to say, ‘Heaven, old pal, is mostly just vastly indifferent to your needs and wants, my friend.’
So what did Straub do? Well, once he got his bearings back, he painted it and gave it a name. “Ground Pilot” is one of the paintings he will show at his opening. A mixed media painting, part of the canvas has a newspaper photograph of paramedics working on Straub while the plane burns in the background and a headline declares: “Pilot Dies in Fiery Crash.” And that’s only part of the painting. The acrylic-based colors are slashed across the canvas in a strangely alluring blend of color and form; but it is with the sort of allure that also manages to scare your intestines bone dry in the process. “The crash was a life defining event for me,” says Straub, and so he processed and absorbed it so as to apply the lesson both to his therapy practice (he also counsels police and fire personnel dealing with post-traumatic stress problems) and his art.
The line between allure and terror is a recurring theme of much of Straub’s work. Much of his work is done with offbeat materials as the paint and applying them with equally idiosyncratic implements.  Much of the ‘paint’ is actually a mix of various bonding materials, marble dust and ‘secret ingredients’. These he layers on to slabs of Masonite, (which is not as odd as it sounds since early paintings from the 11th Century  used wood covered with English chalk whiting) by means of barbecue tongs, brooms, hoses and wire brushes. He may build up the surface of parts of a painting to three to four inches off the surface. He may slam the back of the Masonite with a hammer so that the chunks fall off, and then re-glue then back on at different angles.
It works, especially when you consider the subject matter. Much of Straub’s art employs humor, social satire and irony. One of his signature pieces is called “Primordial Ooze,” and it shows an Amoebic creature with spines rising out of a deep blue background. Other pieces show needle-nose pliers with eyes above their slip joints, swimming in some freakish sea, the business end of their jaws about to eat either one of their fallen own if not an unfortunate lug nut too slow to get out of harm’s way. “The way I look at it, there’s no difference between these ‘before mankind’ creatures eating each other than there is watching one phone company eat up another phone company for customers,” he says. “It’s all the same dance.”
Another painting, called  “Migration,” features real wrenches glued and arranged in a circle to a rosy-gray bottom that looks like a seabed. Another, with the title “My Second Facelift,” has a vaguely human face with cross-strewn explosions of twisted coils of colored wire running against its grain. The inspiration?  “I was reading about Joan Rivers and the amount of surgery she’s had done, and I just went with it. A lot of times I have no idea exactly what a painting is going to be, I just paint it and there it is, almost as if the paint was talking to me.  All I know is if I don’t paint these things, I’ll freak out.”
And like a lot of driven people, people who live intensely and think intensely all of the time, it’s a good thing the paint talks to Straub. They can interpret what its saying, and translate it into a piece that can baffle, instruct, scare and inspire laughter. There’s a lot of things to fear out there in the real world, and there’s a lot of stuff to laugh at out there, too; we just need the Reinhard Straubs of the world to give them a face. Even if it ends up haunting our dreams.

One od Reihard Straub's paintings, entitled "Feeding Frenzy."

If you go
Reinhard Straub’s open house will take place  Oct. 4 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 25 Carolina Main Street, and will feature a number of events in addition to viewings of his art. Mike Monahan and Friends, a band in which he plays electric violin will play, as will other musical guests. Directions can be found at www.reinhardstraub.net. For information on HopArts and the tour Oct. 17-18, visit www.hoparts.org, or call Leah Grear at 491-9298.