The band is cooking tonight. From twenty feet away you feel every kick of the drum and every chop of the guitar. Soulful, funky music at its best. The horn section leans in and lets fly with some of the most energetic harmonizing you've ever heard and the place explodes with applause, shouts, whistles and hoots. And then there's that guy a few feet to your left. What the hell is he doing? Dancing, but what with? It's huge. It's... a canvas. You take a few steps back, excusing yourself as you bump into several partying concert-goers, until you can see the canvas the man is dancing in front of, and you finally realize this guy isn't just dancing; he's painting the band. Live. What you have been watching is there on his canvas, in a somewhat abstract form, but there's something else. Ribbons of color everywhere. At first you wonder what it is, but somehow you understand without asking, because even though you never saw it on the stage, you now understand it was there.

It's the vortex. The energy created by both the musicians and their audience, along with other factors. AcoustiOptics.

AcoustiWhat?

Randy Leo Frechette is the man who paints what others can't see. But call him Frenchy. To get a good overview of what Frenchy does, visit his web site, www.frenchylive.com. You'll see pictures of his paintings of dozens of artists from P-Funk to The Black Crowes, several events at three different Olympics and various odds and ends. Once you've taken the tour, you'll always know a Frenchy painting when you see one. That originality has translated to success during his lifetime, a luxury rarely afforded artists, and he sells his paintings right out of his gallery on Royal Street in the French Quarter. Artists dream of such a situation. For Frenchy, it's real. He's respected by his peers, his work is sought by collectors and he has the satisfaction of knowing that he's one of a kind.

Frenchy recently took a break from his busy schedule to talk to us about his work, his life, his philosophies and... oh yeah, that AcoustiOptics thing. What IS that, anyway?

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Cosmik: You paint a lot more than bands in performance. You don't just paint an artist playing an instrument, which can be interesting itself, but you paint ribbons of color surrounding the musicians, the vortex of energy. Are you painting what you actually see, or what you hear and imagine?

Frenchy: It's a combination of all the senses. It's a combination of the whole day. It's a release of passion. When there's a band, an event, and energy being created, it's being created into a vortex, and I believe you can tap into it. The more people you have, the more energy you have.

Cosmik: In the audience?

Frenchy: Yeah, the more people that are on the same page, the more intense that energy is.

Cosmik: So it's not always just from the musician.

Frenchy: No, it's from the people, the venue, and then the music has a lot to do with it. A lot of the musicians are friends that I've established relationships with throughout the years, so there's even more of a release on my end when I'm painting bands I'm familiar with, I know the music, I can subconsciously pre-anticipate rhythms and thoughts and I can single out just the bass or whatever. When I get into the painting, I'll real gesturally sketch out the band because I want to put their image in there, but I'm primarily working the abstract behind it, the energy flowing through everybody. Sometimes I use forms, or just brush strokes. Just whatever's going through me at the time. But the colors that I pick have a lot to do with the emotions that I'm feeling through that music, that instrument, that key or that note. I try to stay real in tune with the sound and stay with the rhythm, and that allows me to do the painting fast.

Cosmik: This is kind of a weird area for some people and not for others, but I'm curious because of the glow in your paintings. Such a tiny percentage of the population can see auras around people. Are you able to?

Frenchy: I'm not sure. I feel auras but I don't know about actually, physically seeing them. I see them when I'm translating them into paint. I close my eyes and then whatever color ends up on my brush ends up there, and I think that freedom of expression allows for nothing getting in the way, and that might be the true color I'm seeing without actually trying to see it.

Cosmik: I've wondered if a musician's aura changes during performance.

Frenchy: Definitely. It's like every color you can imagine and then some. I'm still looking for those colors. I don't think man can make those colors. Not physically. (Laughs.) Yeah, I believe that. If I'm just going to a gig, I'll just sit there and stare and take all these visual sketches, you know? Then I have all this visual imagery that's subconsciously in my head from all the thousand-plus gigs I've done, and when I'm painting in the studio, it's easy for me to tap into that, too. Now, in my studio paintings, I'll be doing the AcoustiOptics abstracts, which have no bands, but to me, they're my interpretations of sound waves floating through space. There's usually a vortex in all the paintings somewhere, or the shapes, if you look at it in a certain way, will twist into a vortex.

Cosmik: I'm thumbing through the dictionary here and I can't find AcoustiOptics, so maybe now would be a good time to explain what that is.

[Painting of The Abyssinians.]

Frenchy: AcoustiOptics... Pretty funny story. I was new to New Orleans, and I was painting at the Funky Butt. I was the new kid on the block, and I was painting [saxophonist] Earl Turbinton, [Trumpeter] Terrance Blanchard, this dude named Matt Dillion, and Walter Payton, the famous bass player. Walter and Earl, the two oldest guys, came back to me at the end of the gig and they were looking at the painting, and one of them said "You know whatcha doin', right?" I said "Whatcha talkin' about?" He said "You know whatcha paintin', right?" I said "Uh... Paintin' ya'all." He said "NOOOooo, baaaby! You paintin' AcoustiOptics!" I thought "What?!? I've never heard THAT word before." He said it was about the relationship between sound and color, and how brain perceives the two, and I thought "Well, shit, that makes all the sense in the world!" It started to make sense to me all the crazy colors I'd been using. So that was that. Then I went out and checked every dictionary, every thesaurus, every science book, and I could not find the word AcoustiOptics anywhere. (Laughs.)

Cosmik: But you should lobby for it. (Laughs)

Frenchy: Oh, I'm going to! It makes all the sense in the world. But yeah, that word was handed over to me from Earl back in January of '97. It was a very enlightening evening for me. Up to that point I had maybe 30 paintings under my belt. Up to that point, I felt it, but I couldn't put my finger on why I was choosing these particular colors or these backgrounds. Then here comes Earl and he throws that word on my lap, and from then on I've just been adding my own definition to it.

Cosmik: Having it defined and given validity made it easier for you to do?

Frenchy: Definitely, yeah. I really had no direction. I was just going out and painting all the music I could, and at the end of the night going "Wow... that was fun." Looking at the painting and thinking "Holy shit, that's a weird brush stroke. Why'd I do that?"

Cosmik: That's interesting. Would you say then that before it had definition you were a bit inhibited about it and unsure?

Frenchy: Yeah. Every painting now I get a little more free, you know? Now it's so fluid it's... not to use the word "easy," but... it's without thought. It's just "whoosh," there it is. It's like doing a continuous guitar solo from start to finish, just laying it out there.

Cosmik: I definitely feel the energy of a show but I've never been able to express it like you have, even in my own mind. I wonder if the energy vortex changes in different situations. If you go see a band that does the same show night after night, with the same rehearsed solos, and then the next night you go see someone like David S. Ware or Matthew Shipp, or anyone who creates at the moment, is the vortex different?

Frenchy: There's a big difference, yeah, because the music is more experimental so you never know what the painting's going to turn up like. I try to get into the same mindframe as the musicians before they go on. I've meditated with the musicians and all kinds of fun stuff. Got all juiced up. But it's challenging for musicians who play the same set every night for a 40-show run, but you can separate the big dogs from the little dogs that way, because the ones that are really into it for the love of it, even if they're playing the same songs over and over again, every time is different for them and just as special, and that's true for 99% of the touring musicians out there, even if they don't admit it. I see it. I feel their love for the music. There's no doubt. They wouldn't be there otherwise.

Cosmik: I'd love to be able to watch a group like String Trio of New York through your eyes, to see what the vortex is like when three incredible musicians create something brand new on the fly at high speed.

Frenchy: Yeah, well that's why we have paint.

Cosmik: You're right. (laughs)

Frenchy: (Laughs) Yeeeeah, see, how fortunate I can slow it down.

Cosmik: It must be a trip to be at a show and watch you in the crowd with canvas, painting the band as they play. I'd imagine most people are torn between watching the band they paid to see and watching you paint the band they paid to see.

Frenchy: The best feeling in the world is when you get done with a gig, sometimes I'm huffing and puffing, but a lot of the people I meet get inspired and go home and paint something, and that's a good motivation for me to go out there and keep painting. In the process I'm inspiring myself as well, and everybody needs to be inspired.

Cosmik: Maybe one of the reasons people like me are so awestruck when we see your paintings is... when I say people like me, I mean people who can't so much as draw a straight line, but maybe we're so awestruck because we couldn't do that in a million years.

Frenchy: Yeah, and I have a grand piano in my gallery, and right now I have [Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown's keyboardist] Joe Crown in there playing the shit out of it, playing a bunch of Professor Longhair and James Booker. I bang on it all the time but I can't make no music, so I know how you feel (laughs). I see these guys on stage, and I wanna be up there... Well, maybe not UP there, but playing an instrument. I dabble with a little trumpet and a little piano, but I'm still learning how to paint, I think, so...

Cosmik: A lot of people who can play the hell out of an instrument would trade in a second.

Frenchy: You know, the scale is your colors. In between notes there are turquoises and cobalt blues and weird purples and pinks. I don't necessarily agree with the [concept of the] musical scale, it does sound good, but there are other sounds. Unbelievable sounds. Endless amount of sounds that a musician can create, I think.

Cosmik: You don't agree with playing scales because it's limiting, like handcuffs.

Frenchy: Yeah. You're gonna paint B Flat in a purple, and I think "No, I want to paint that shit bright red, at least right now," you know? I'm a big fan of [saxophonist] Kid Jordan, and he's all improv like Michael Ray. He gets all "Sun Ra" and that stuff. But I like it all. I love bluegrass, I love strings, I love piano... I was blessed one year, I think it was '98, I got to paint at the International Bluegrass Awards in Louisville, Kentucky, and there were cats from Japan, Russia, and all over the world. All these kids, I see they're in bands coming to the country now, but they were just teenagers then. I've never seen so many white people with soul. (Laughs.) I was completely blown away. I was in tears walking through the hallways, because all these musicians came out of Kentucky and all the surrounding states and went to this thing, and they just set up and played in the hallway of the hotel. I mean there were three piece bands set up in the elevators playing for the people going up and down. It was out of the box. This grandmother's playing standup bass 'till five in the morning. It was fun. That ended my summer, and I had started my summer out at the Telluride Bluegrass Fest, so that was a damn good summer.

Cosmik: You painted somebody who amazes me because he plays such incredible blues and then turns around and plays stormin' bluegrass the very next song: Gatemouth Brown.

Frenchy: Oooh yeah. Joe Crown's Clarence's piano and organ player, the guy who's in my gallery right now playing my piano. He was just telling me stories about him and Gate on the road. Gate's fabulous, man. Still stronger than ever. He lives on the bayou. Pulls up in his big black Cadillac, tires screeching, it's like "Get out the way, here comes Gate!" (Laughs.) Drives like a madman!

Cosmik: Let's go back to the beginning now, because I want to find out what led to this. Where were you before New Orleans, and what were you painting, because I'm pretty sure you didn't start painting bands right off the bat.

Frenchy: Well, I'm from Lowell, Mass, which is Jack Kerouac's home town, the old industrial smokestacks, canals everywhere, industrial revolution city. Lowell is very old, very blue collar. I grew up drawing. I was gifted, so I could just draw stuff, which helps me on my painting because you have subjects moving around on stage, you've got to be able to sketch real quick and get the figures somewhat right. But I'm not really too concerned about the grammatics of it all, I'm more into the flow of the whole painting, and having fun. So here I am, this kid from Lowell, and I move down to Orlando, Florida, and I came across this Herman Leonard book in a book store. Herman Leonard's a famous photographer of jazz musicians. He grew up in New Jersey, photographed in Harlem, then moved on to Paris, and he's in his 70s now. These are pictures of Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis as a kid, Freddie Hubbard, everybody you can imagine. So I had this book and I just started painting. I'd see the emotion in these guys and I'd say, "Wow, I wanna be there," because I grew up boxing - my dad's an ex-professional fighter and so is my grandfather - so I grew up with a passion for sport...

Cosmik: I'm surprised you don't have paintings of boxing on your site.

Frenchy: I painting some Olympic boxing, but I gave that to my dad.

Cosmik: So you saw a parallel?

Frenchy: When I looked at those pictures of the jazz musicians, I saw that same look of passion in their eyes that you see in a fighter's eyes while he's training.

Cosmik: The hungry look.

Frenchy: Yeah, in the zone. So I painted a bunch of pictures from this book. Then I started selling and people started showing my work, and then this band called Heavy Metal Horns, out of Boston, who've broken up now, a high energy, real funky jazz band came into Orlando to the Sapphire Supper Club to play, and I went to hang out with them because they were from Boston and I was from near Boston. I ended up meeting the guys and showing them all my photographs and paintings, and they were like "Yeah, right ON, Dude! DUDE!," you know... Boston... (laughs) "come out paint us, Dude, it'll be awesome!" So the next night they had another gig there and I showed up and set up on the side, and I painted the band while they played. I'd never done that before. Always before I'd painted in black and white, and somber colors, and I did this painting - and I did it in oil, to boot, because I was into oil at the time - and I painted all these loose forms of musicians, not real tight like everything else I'd painted all my life, and all these wild colors I never knew existed came out of my palette. I went home that night and thought "Whoa, what happened?!? That was awesome!" I basically fell in love with it that night. That was it. I did that, then I painted a band called City Heat, then I painted Chuck Mangione.

Cosmik: What year was that?

Frenchy: That was October 17th, 1995, at the Pleasure Island Jazz Festival.

Cosmik: A few years before you left Orlando. What prompted you to move to New Orleans?

Frenchy: When I was in Orlando I waited tables, which was awesome because it gave me a lot of free time to paint. I worked at the Hard Rock Cafe, and all the dudes that worked there always said "Dude, you've got to go to New Orleans." They'd all seen my art, they knew my personality, they knew about the music here and everybody was pushing me to come here. I had never been here before. I was engaged at the time, too. A lot of things changed in my life. I went to the Olympics in Atlanta and painted there, ended up meeting up with people from The House Of Blues there. I painted at their club in Atlanta and they invited me to New Orleans to an Open Door. I went back to Orlando, broke up with my fiance, went up to Boston for about a month, went back down to Orlando for a month, painted like twenty gigs and sold eighteen of them, took that money and high-tailed it to New Orleans. My truck I had at the time, on my way back from Boston the transmission caught on fire, so it wasn't runnin' too good (laughs). I got it kinda Mickey-Mouse fixed, so I couldn't drive it to New Orleans, so I rented a Ryder truck and filled it up... well, I had no furniture, so I just filled it with my clothes and paintings, hooked a dolly up to the Ryder truck and towed my own truck to New Orleans.

Cosmik: Sounds like you got there on a wing and a prayer.

Frenchy: Yeah, it was amazing. In two weeks I was flat broke. In about a month I was starving, but I refused to get a job because I was determined to make a living out of painting. I'd cut the umbilical cord, and I couldn't hook it back up. That was it. I was floating.

Cosmik: Ballsy move. You either make it or die.

Frenchy: That's about it. So after a couple nervous breakdowns, I started selling some paintings. It's been up and down, up and down, but now I'm more up than ever before. It really helps me feel more empowered painting. I feel stronger, you know? I feel supported. That's huge in any human being's life, to have support, and that's enabling me to do the AcoustiOptics and to do nudes and to do landscapes, and back to things that normal painters paint, but I see it in a totally different way. Now I look at a tree, and it's not just a tree; it's alive. It's a metropolis of living organisms and it's just fascinating to me. When I paint a tree, it has an aura. I don't see them, but I feel them.

Cosmik: So ten painters will look at that tree and see the same tree, but you're going to paint something completely different because of what the tree's giving off?

Frenchy: Oh yeah. Everybody has their own way. They go through college and they're told to do a certain thing. I think it's impeding on art students to have instructors telling them how to do things the way they do them.

Cosmik: Worse yet, when they tell the students they're doing it wrong.

Frenchy: Had some students here at the gallery last night. We were filming a special. We were doing some live sketches, and this one girl, she was just like "Well, Frenchy, I don't know... I just don't like it," and I looked at her work and said "Dude, you're KILLING me! LOOK at this!" She'd used a lot of dark stuff, and her stuff was totally different from everybody elses. You know, it was kinda rude, if you were looking at it that way, but I looked at it like "This girl sees things really good." She's pulling off these great lines. I picked out a certain part of the sketch and said "THAT is just rocking my world," you know? Sometimes you have to do a million sketches just to get that one little piece of a part of a section of a sketch right. It's just all about application of creativity, and the more you do this, the better you're gonna get at applying your creativity.

Cosmik: Then even if what an artist is doing isn't really to your liking, you're able to see what's great about it?

Frenchy: Totally.

Cosmik: I'm curious about that. If you're painting a band that you don't particularly like, can you still...

Frenchy: Absolutely. No problem. I painted Rick Springfield.

Cosmik: (Laughs). No kidding? Rick Springfield?

Frenchy: That was not easy, but I did it. All these 40 year old women were throwing roses at him. It was weird.

Cosmik: Was there an energy vortex there for you to feel?

Frenchy: Oh, yeah! His audience were all these hard-core, mid-40s women who were just so fired up to see Rick, you know?

Cosmik: Well, plus, the guy really does put out for his audience. He works his ass off up there.

Frenchy: He does. He puts on a hell of a performance. I was really impressed, but I'm just not a big fan of the music. I'm there to document a performance.

Cosmik: Have you ever documented a performance by someone who has a darker kind of music, like maybe...

Frenchy: The Melvins.

Cosmik: Yeah, The Melvins, or Black Sabbath?

Frenchy: Not Black Sabbath, but I've done John Cale, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, which... my hand went through the canvas.

Cosmik: Did it?!

Frenchy: Yeah, well sometimes if I get a little too riled up and I don't have my hand-eye coordination just right, you can make a big rip in the painting if you're going real fast.

Cosmik: And that's that for the painting.

Frenchy: So next time I paint Jon Spencer, I'm bringing a piece of plywood. (Laughs.)

Cosmik: You're in a place where... I mean, The Big Easy, you know? Every night you can walk down the street and just pick a club and see someone amazing like that. We get them one at a time everywhere else, you have them in residence. That has to be a playground for you.

Frenchy: It is, and it's allowed me to create thousands of paintings. Unfortunately my arm fell out about two years ago and I had to have an operation on my elbow because of ligament damage from stretching so much canvas. I stretch all my own canvas. The last two years it's been a recurring thing, and where I used to paint five, six nights a week, now I'm down to about three. But it's okay, because now I do a lot more stuff in the studio, in my gallery. I paint right in the gallery.

Cosmik: More comfortable?

Frenchy: I have to be here. It's my business, and it's a dream come true to have a gallery on Royal Street in the French Quarter. On one side I've got Chagall and Picasso and on the other side I've got Rembrandt and Warhol and Peter Max.

Cosmik: And there you are.

Frenchy: My gallery's real different. Real raw. None of my paintings have frames on 'em, my gallery's real open and all color. My front right now is all nudes and abstracts. It's pretty cool. I'm getting ready to do a huge abstract. I'm fired up. A 9-by-6 canvas, one big abstract painting. I've done two that size already and they both sold right out of the gallery within a few weeks.

Cosmik: Do you mind if I ask what something that goes for?

Frenchy: $7,000.

Cosmik: ... Wow. That's good money!

Frenchy: (Laughs.) A lot more than I get for the band stuff! It's so funny, because that's something that you've gotta bring your gear out, you gotta set up, you gotta paint, you gotta get all into it, get dirty, get into it, and really work at it. And with the abstract stuff, it's so... I call it "mental masturbation," and you can quote me on that. What I do is I just look at the blank canvas and I'll just have black on my palette, and I'll dip my brush in it and use my brush as a pencil and just real gesturally do all these shapes over the canvas, then I'll come back in and pull out the pieces I want to use and fill in the colors and form it. It's kind of like sculpting.

Cosmik: Make the picture come out of the canvas. From what I hear, you're practically dancing while you're painting.

Frenchy: That developed over the years, too, because at first I was locked into a position painting, and the more I got comfortable with it, the more I started releasing. Now... I can't see what I'm doing, but supposedly I'm starting to turn into a little bit of a performance, too. Again, every gig I get a little looser and a little more confident with my brush stroke. It's fun to paint, so I'm sure it's fun to watch.

Cosmik: What other kinds of live events have you painted?

Frenchy: All kinds of gigs come out of this. Conventions hire me all the time in New Orleans to paint at the conventions, I've done wedding receptions, NASCAR races, basketball games, I just got back from the Winter Olympics where I did seven events.

Cosmik: I've been looking at your Olympic pictures a lot the past few days. Fantastic stuff. I love the skiing and hockey paintings.

Frenchy: They were challenging. I tried to keep the paintings true to the environment, which means not working on them after the event. I could go in later and tighten the shit out of them, but then it wouldn't be a live painting from my seat. At that point I might as well just take a photograph, take it home and paint it and make it look really nice, but that's not what it's all about.

Cosmik: It was snowing hard the day of the men's slalom. Did you work with a tent over you?

Frenchy: No, the snow wasn't really too bad because it's just flakes. When it rains it can really be a problem. I'd never painted in the snow, but I did then.

Cosmik: There are a lot of great musicians, and I mean truly great, in New Orleans that aren't that well known elsewhere. They have record deals and they can tour, but they deserve bigger audiences. Walter "Wolfman" Washington, for example.

Frenchy: Oh, keep going, because there are so many. Even like George Porter, he's not even really that well known in the big scheme. He's well respected here, by fans and musicians. But yeah, there's an unbelievable gumbo full of musicians here.

Cosmik: I look at the list of paintings and see Wolfman, the Nevilles, Porter, The Meters and bands like that and then I look at the paintings and I just think... how can you even leave town?

Frenchy: It's tough, but it's like I always leave to go meet up with some other New Orleans musician somewhere else (laughs).

Cosmik: How do you finish a perfect painting during a single performance when most of us have trouble getting a decent photograph at a concert? I mean, you start and finish in just a few hours, if that.

Frenchy: Oh, I could do it in twenty minutes if I had to.

Cosmik: No way!

Frenchy: Yeah. (Laughs).

Cosmik: It takes me that long to figure out the angle I want to take the picture from.

Frenchy: Well, the background would be more solid colors than anything, but I could definitely get the figures done. I personally like two sets. I like to do one set to lay it out, get the colors going and let it all dry, come back the second set layer over a whole 'nother painting on top of it, you know? But you learn how to gauge yourself. I know in my head what time it is, how many songs have been played - especially if I already know the set list, it's a lot easier - and if it's a headlining band they'll play an encore of one, two or three songs, and in that span of time I can get a lot done.

Cosmik: With all these amazing paintings you do, how come you don't do more prints so more of your work can circulate?

Frenchy: Well, I hadn't really been in the financial position or had a place to sell them out of until now, until I got the gallery. We had to put up a considerable amount of money. We have five prints available now. They're all limited editions, in the two hundreds, and they're fabulous. And you know, it's great to sell something knowing I didn't have to paint it. (Laughs.) It's a painting that's actually paying itself off. Musicians, you know, they go to a gig, they get paid at the end of the night. I don't get paid until I sell the painting. Sometimes I don't get paid that night, sometimes not for a week, or a month or a year down the road, and sometimes I don't get paid at all. The trick was doing enough so there was a large enough body of work so it creates a snowball effect, so something's always moving.

Cosmik: How NOT to be a starving artist. Rare these days. Or any days.

Frenchy: That's the secret. And having the right people working for you, too. That'd be Jamie and Pete, my two best friends. They take real good care of me and I trust them one hundred percent.

Cosmik: They work in the gallery?

Frenchy: Yep.

Cosmik: I'm looking at another one of my favorites right now, because it's so different. It's your painting of the cooks in Jacques-Imo's Kitchen in New Orleans. How did you get into doing that?

Frenchy: Well, Jacques-Imo's is right beside The Maple Leaf, which is a music venue here in town. Every week I'd go paint at The Maple Leaf, and the restaurant owner would see me walk by with my easel and stuff and he knew who I was. One day when I was walking by he grabbed me and said "Hey, I want to commission you to do a painting of my kitchen." So I did. He has this big wall by his bar, and he always has like a two-hour wait. He asked me to hang up all my paintings there, so boom! That was a huge avenue for me. I had done paintings of two other chefs before then, then I did that one just last summer. But Jacques actually asked me to paint his line while they're cooking, because it's just like a band, all working in sequence and rhythm and makin' people happy. It's a great combination. Now I've painted Commander's Palace, Clancy's, Delta Grill in New York City. I want to do more stuff, though. Eventually I want to do a whole collection of New Orleans chefs from different kitchens, and we're going to make a coffee table book out of it, with a recipe from each chef and the story of each of their restaurants.

Cosmik: What a great idea! And probably easy to arrange.

Frenchy: Yeah, because everybody gets a little plug, so everybody's happy.

Cosmik: Is that anywhere close on the horizon?

Frenchy: Not yet. It's going to take a lot of organization. We're just getting geared up for our French Quarter coming up, and then we've got the Jazz Festival, and then I'll be taking off for the summer.

Cosmik: What's the plan for the jazz festival?

Frenchy: Well, every year I just go out there, pick a spot on the lawn, pitch my easel, throw a blanket, you know...

Cosmik: I heard a rumor that you might be painting from the stage at some point, as the guest of at least one artist.

Frenchy: Yeah, there are some options. A lot of times the bands think to bring me up on stage with them to paint, but we don't have anything set in stone yet with anybody. James Andrews wants me up there with him, Papa Grows Funk wants me up there, but we'll see...

Cosmik: Hmmm... You sound kind of hesitant about that.

Frenchy: Ahhh... I really enjoy being in the crowd at the festivals. I dig it. But it would be nice to get the perspective from the monitors, you know? Catch the sides of the musicians and then just the sea of people. That would be pretty cool.

Cosmik: It would be interesting to see the vortex enveloping the crowd.

Frenchy: Ooooh yeah.

Cosmik: I love this painting from Yankee Stadium, too. It's different from everything else. I'm a serious baseball freak, though, so that's a clue.

Frenchy: It's more like a landscape study of Yankee Stadium. That was my first ballgame I went to, when I painted that. Madison Square Garden Network put me on TV. "Frenchy's doing a painting in the stadium..." It was great. My friends are calling me up screaming "DUDE!!! YOU'RE ON TV, MAN!!! MSG!!!" (Laughs.) And the Redsox were playing, but they lost.

Cosmik: Oooh, right! You're a Boston boy! (Laughs.)

Frenchy: (Laughs.) That's okay, I got to see the Patriots win in New Orleans. That was remarkable.

Cosmik: Are you a baseball fan?

Frenchy: I'm a fan of all sports.

Cosmik: Then don't you think you have a responsibility to do a painting in Fenway before it's gone?

Frenchy: Definitely. (Pauses.) Definitely... Aw, man, I don't wanna think about that.

Cosmik: Yeah, I know, it's a religious thing.

Frenchy: It's a beautiful park, man. The seats are steep so you're right over the field, and it's old and... I don't know.

Cosmik: Sacred. You have to paint it.

Frenchy: Yeah.

Cosmik: Well I've really enjoyed talking to you. I just have one more question for you, and it goes back to something we talked about earlier, and that's the fact that most painters don't have success until they've been dead for something like sixty years, yet here you are, you're already known, people love your work, you're living large, you have a gallery in the right spot, people want you to paint them and life is good. Do you ever just reflect on all and think about how fortunate you are, that you get to enjoy it all?

Frenchy: Every day. I'm very blessed. I came from a lower-middle class family, grew up in tenements, had food stamps, fighting my way out of the neighborhoods. I come into the gallery floating, because I'm living a dream, and I'm fully aware of it. In order to get, you must give. I'm definitely a giver, not a taker, so as long as I keep giving I know good things will continue to happen. I just try to give as much as I can. I try not to get caught up in everything that's happening because it's rather overwhelming, you know? You don't want to jinx yourself, you just want to keep your head down and keep working. But it's nice to come up for air once in a while and see how people are reacting to the paintings. And it's very flattering to do interviews, over the phone or in person. I'm just blown away.

(C) 2002 - DJ Johnson