A Nice New Article About ol’ BlackCatTips

August 30, 2024

I recently showcased all the art from my Smile A While book at the Avondale Arts Alliance in Avondale Estates, GA. I had not shown all of my art from the book in the Atlanta area before. This show led to a few discussions and then an interview with Rough Draft Atlanta. I would like to thanks Isadora Pennington for writing this article and her great photos of me and my working space.

The following is the article from August 29 edition of Rough Draft Atlanta.

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Chances are, you’ve seen the work of local folk artist Kyle Brooks, who works under the pseudonym BlackCatTips. His witticisms and whimsical painted creatures often appear on discarded scraps of wood which are then affixed to telephone poles or propped up along roadways.

“Brown Dogs, $25” reads one piece that I pass almost daily. “Is God Clear?” asks another sign that is positioned prominently across from the DeKalb Farmers Market. “Let’s Be Thankful For The Simple Things,” “Be Good Not Bad,” and “Tell A Friend Hello” are just some of the positive messages incorporated in his recent works.

Brooks was recently involved with the Drawn Together exhibition at the Avondale Arts Center, during which wooden panels from his children’s book “Smile A While” were displayed alongside small woodcut characters that he is working on for his next book, “You Are A Friend.” On opening weekend, he made coloring pages for attendees and read his book to children during a storytime event.

Though it’s certainly not the first time that his works have been in a gallery setting, Brooks doesn’t regularly showcase his works in formal galleries; instead he prefers to paste his work on forgotten signposts and on the sides of local businesses. He also sells his completed works online and works via commissions. 

Part poet and part artist, Brooks seemingly just can’t help himself. He must make art. It flows out of him like water bubbling out of a spring. 

I was recently invited to visit his colorful and eclectic home studio that’s tucked away in the backyard of his family home near Arabia Mountain. Lining the walls are vibrant works in various stages of completion. Cans of paint cover the floor and surround the table where he works. Doodled faces peek out from seemingly everywhere. Outside, under the eaves of the porch, a lush array of well-tended plants hang from the rafters. 

Brooks has always been a Georgia boy. He grew up with his parents and sister in Decatur and North Henry County. “I’ve spent all my life here,” recalled Brooks. He saw his grandparents almost every day during his childhood and often visited their home which was situated on seven acres of land in Panthersville. He benefited from growing up in a family with deep ties to the local community.

As a child, Brooks enjoyed drawing and painting as all kids do, but it wasn’t until college when he started really diving into art in a more serious fashion. “I don’t know why, but I would just write,” said Brooks. Love songs, poems, and short stories would come to him and he felt compelled to jot them down. He learned how to play guitar and many of his musings evolved into songs. 

“I was painting back then, but nobody was aware of it,” said Brooks. After graduating, he landed his first office job doing graphic design for the John H. Harland Company and started painting at night just for fun. “I wanted to paint in a more free way; a way that didn’t have many restrictions on it.” 

When he was just getting started he would lay out a dropcloth on the floor of his basement apartment and churn out piece after piece. He didn’t have formal training, and was frustrated when he would attempt portraits or landscapes.

Then, he started digging through dumpsters to find discarded bits of wood and would paint funny words on them. Something sparked in Brooks – this was the fun he had been looking for. 

Later, when Brooks met his wife Maria, she encouraged him to become more serious about his artistic practice. 

At the time, Maria was working a temp job at the same company as Brooks. She visited his condo and saw all the pieces he had been making and told him that he should do more with his artwork. In those early days he often would take older pieces of his and paint something quick and funny on top of the artwork, then leave them around town with a letter to whoever found the piece. 

“I don’t know what made me do it, but I started putting stuff on telephone poles in East Atlanta,” said Brooks, who lived in the neighborhood. 

“I started making faces on cardboard and some cutout pieces of wood and attaching them to telephone poles, kind of my version of some of these signs you see at an intersection that say ‘Cash for Cars,’ or ‘DNA Test, Who’s Your Daddy?’ They were kind of my initial take on that,” recalled Brooks. “I had some about calling your mom, I had some that said free hugs or hugs for $400, kind of like jokes on those signs.”

In time Brooks developed a signature character, a bear, that he translated into a spray-painted stencil. Relying on cardboard scraps from the grocery store, he would take them home and transform them into funny little guys that would then pop up on posts seemingly out of thin air.

Brooks’ wife Maria suggested that he participate in the East Atlanta Strut. He did, and during the event many people started making the connection between the artist and these rogue art pieces that they had been encountering in the neighborhood. 

“That’s really what started the connections,” said Brooks. He continued with the signs, and got involved with some gallery shows in town. Eventually he applied to Art on the Beltline, for which he painted his first ever mural. 

The proposal was a piece that incorporated his now famous bear faces and words. “I did that, not knowing what I was doing,” Brooks chuckled at the memory. “They gave me a giant retaining wall off of Langhorn in the West End. I spent three weeks painting it off and on. I took my little dog with me and would have a picnic and paint. Gosh, I would do it so differently now.” 

Maria, forever in his corner, pushed him even more and suggested that he try working as a full-time artist for six months just to see how it would go. That was in 2012. “I’m trying, still trying,” said Brooks. “I’m still going.”

One thing I had always been curious about is whether or not he gets nervous about getting in trouble when installing a new piece of public artwork out in the world. Surprisingly, he said he almost never heard any feedback, good or bad, about his public art pieces. He could recall only a few instances of people confronting him about his work, and told me that he once asked a police officer if what he was doing would get him into trouble. 

“The police told me that what I was doing was kind of in that gray area. I like that. It wasn’t what most people might do, but at the same time it wasn’t something you couldn’t do. I never put anything on anybody’s personal property,” he told me. 

Brooks’ charming southern drawl, his disarming personality, and his distinctive reddish beard are part of the lore of BlackCatTips. At 6’4″ he would be intimidating if he wasn’t so darn sweet.

Brooks is often approached by fans. People who spot him on the side of the road will pull over just to shake his hand and tell him how much they love his work. I’ve personally seen it happen on two separate occasions leading up to the exhibition at the Avondale Arts Center.

While the content of Brooks’ artwork is almost 100% cheerful, witty, fun, and childlike, he told me that when he was starting he attempted to make some works that contended with darker topics. 

“I wanted to make these dark paintings. I attempted to, but the stuff I made didn’t look that dark. I tried to draw monsters and things like that but they looked more silly like the abominable snowman in Rudolph. Just not really scary. It didn’t work that well.”

Brooks explained that he tries hard not to overthink his artwork. With the exception of certain pieces and commissions, he doesn’t usually have a concrete idea of what faces, figures, or words will appear in his works. He just sits down and lets it flow out of him through his brush. 

“The goal is just to paint like I paint and get better at what I do,” explained Brooks. “I don’t say, ‘hey I’m going to paint happy silly paintings,’ it’s just the way it is. That’s just what happens.” 

Fully embracing his Southern roots, Brooks is not interested in changing himself to better fit in with others or what people expect him to be. He’s just himself, through and through. That authenticity is apparent, and his fans appreciate his honest approach to creativity. 

“You gotta be you,” said Brooks with emphasis. “With art, that’s just what you have to do. It’s like when you have an orange; you squeeze it and orange juice comes out. I’m an artist, and when you squeeze me this art comes out.”

Brooks leaned back in his chair and looked around at the works on his studio walls. “This is one of the things that holds me together,” he said. “If I didn’t do the work…” he trailed off for a moment, deep in thought, and shook his head. “I have to do it. I have to. Without it I don’t know what would happen to me.” 

You can find Kyle Brooks’ artwork at various spots around town. Whether on a collector’s wall, adorning the side of your pet’s veterinarian office, scrawled on a forgotten bit of fence post, posted high up on a telephone pole, or even on the new Georgia Pet Foundation license plates that were unveiled this summer. To keep up with his artwork, give him a follow on Instagram.

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See you soon,

Kyle BlackCatTips Brooks