Meet the Artist!

Randy Toy, also known as Toyzini, is a local talented artist and a staple to the Dickson arts community. Currently his piece, Scarry TV, is on display in The Renaissance Center's 11^th Annual Renaissance Regional Exhibit. He has also donated a piece to the Dickson County Humane Shelter Auction on September 19in the Rotunda. Much of Randy's work captures the lifestyle of the rural South. Made of traditional and non-traditional material, Randy, a graduate of Austin Peay University brings the viewer in with the bright colors and comical scenes, while still challenging the viewer's relationships to familiar places, events, locations, and even their own societies and communities. Recently I asked Randy to write a few words about his process…

Painting for me is a way to say the things I want to get across, ideals I have that just saying them would soon be forgot. Images can stay in your mind and can be thought about anytime. One of the greatest compliments I ever received was when a viewer told me that he was thinking about one of my paintings while driving down the road.

The piece that is currently on display at The Renaissance Center is about how people have become so afraid of the weather, and at the same time we become numb to the fact that every time the news comes on it is about how many murders have happened in the past 24 hours.

Another series I have been working on is how artist do not use sponsorship like sports does. Go to a baseball game and the fence is cover with advertising so I have started advertising on the frames of my work. Look on the high school level have you ever seen the local news bring a helicopter to a high school art exhibit?

Another interest of mine is family and local stories both provide me with endless subject matter. Dan Prince called me a storyteller in his book Passing in the Outsider Lane and I love that.

And here is an excerpt from Passing in the Outsider Lane by Dan Prince:

"Randy Toy is a country 'folk teller', as much as any old fellow sitting on the porch whittling and 'yarnin'. His stories condense all of the homilies, common sense, and good fun of rural Tennessee into visual vignettes. Here a picture is worth a thousand words, and while he gives you a bright figurative scene, the paintings also show the dark side of human nature. Randy questions some old time notions, with modern ideas, and uses a farmer's ageless eyes to see the encroachment of modern civilization."

The image to the right is titled Still Wet and depicts Randy Toy's Grandmother selling moonshine on her porch. Come see Randy's work in the Regional Exhibit on view now through Oct 24^th!