Biographical Note

Judson Vereen by Yasmin Vereen, 2021.

I was born November 23rd, 1986 in Fulton County Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia. I had the happiest childhood a boy could ask for. My father was a doctor and my mother a nurse. They were both hardworking, non-political, and mostly non-religious. My father always had the spirit of a gambler and lived a boom-and-bust lifestyle. It left an indelible impression on me and illuminated what living life fearlessly could look like. My mother was softer, sweeter, and not necessarily all that curious. A good mother.

My parents owned a clinic together, practicing general medicine, and my three brothers and I would help clean it on the weekends. My father was also a pilot—he would take us flying and this, too, showed me the world from an exciting, distorted perspective. For sure, my childhood was set in a home filled with love.

From about 7 to 9 years of age I had numerous friends from all sorts of different backgrounds. Austen was my closest and dearest friend. To this day, that was probably my most wholesome friendship. He was dirt poor but had two bee bee guns. We spent several summers together, and I don't think I ever told him goodbye. I remember the names of all those kids, though. I still have some type of affection for them, even now.

At the age of 10, my parents enrolled me into the Woodward Academy, a private military type of school full of southern-type golfers—the children of the elite. I got on just fine with some of them. I was a horrible student. I rebelled every inch of the way. I had horrible acne and to the girls I liked I professed my love in letters that were pages long. I scared the hell out of them, and they never liked me back. The girls who did fancy me I never noticed or paid much attention to.

I did however earn respect from my peers—for one, I was funny and could cut you down. Two—I was a bulldoggish, greasy kid, a little dirty and a little unpredictable. I could never be picked-on.

Never fitting totally in private school, and isolated in many ways, mostly due to my eccentricity, I found meaning in painting, where I excelled quickly. I won awards, participated in state competitions for the arts. I devoured monographs, the catalogs like "ArtNews" and "Art in America".

Everything else became a whisper. Painting was the only thing that wasn't muted…

The truth is, for myself, I never believed in school, the institutions, the law, or "society" in that hyper-organized way. I was supposed to shine my shoes, keep my hair trim, keep my school uniform clean. It was a free training in rebellion, more or less.

Spent a summer in New York City at The School of Visual Arts for a pre-college art school program when I was about 16. I was too young, but they let me in early on account of my awards. It was nonsense. I could not stand one more minute of schooling, but I became transfixed with living in New York—it represented all things alive and dangerous and, therefore, all things illuminating.

Having given up on schooling, I dropped out of high school after the 11th grade and moved to New York to become an artist—I had no desire to make a living there and stayed up most nights painting and drinking beer. I bussed tables, but that job lasted only a week or two. The hotshot artists in New York were all unimpressive.

I made a massive number of paintings in Brooklyn, most of which have been painted over or destroyed. I met good friends in New York, and I am still close with Mark—the others are more or less well-wishers from afar. I'll take it.

With little way to make a living in New York City, within a year, I was back in Georgia and the New York artist experiment had failed. Back in the rural south, I rented a large studio, continued to paint, write and make music in isolation for about five years. I sent dozens of poems off during that time to be published. I never got any response. I did manage to sell several paintings that year, and a show of mine was even written up in the paper. I was young and fed up, and this critic’s review alone was encouraging.

No longer wanting to live in the countryside and with all the rednecks that surrounded me, I moved to San Francisco, California, where I learned to bartend and found a deeper appreciation for rednecks. I worked in dive bars, clubs, and cocktail lounges. I did well, all things considered.

I continued to paint but started to write much more. Funny enough, I acted in a short film about a man who can't make it in America and is desperate to escape. I recorded music, played guitar and sang in open mics and in the subways. Eventually, I found a girlfriend and rented a big apartment. When she left me, I got so behind on rent that I could never recover. I lived in that apartment rent-free for two years, until the landlord left a debt note of over 20,000 dollars on my door. So, I got in my car and left for Los Angeles.

In Los Angeles, I lived in my car for months, until I found a job bartending again, and I saved up enough dough to move indoors. I began running a jazz club and made more money than I had ever seen. The owner was a rich klutz, and we butted heads, so the job only lasted six months.

During that time, my father died, so I went back to Georgia and held his hand as I watched him go. My brothers were there too, Jason, Matt, and Stefan, and they all sobbed as he went. I never cried a single tear, not because I am tough, but because I had said goodbye to him in a certain sense, long before.

During my time in California, I had several jobs. Worked dozens of bars, I fried potato chips, drove a car, bussed tables, played poker, moved art and furniture, waited tables, washed dishes, played guitar for dinner and a beer at a café, and occasionally would sell a painting, usually to a friend, like Mark, who had some extra money and some mercy on my soul. I won't ever forget it.

I trained to become an EMT, and I graduated from the course, but couldn't imagine making a living from an ambulance, so I never followed through with it. Throughout all my life, one consistency is a penchant for substance. I am an alcoholic, but I also always loved the feeling weed gives me. From bartending, I learn to consume massive amounts of cocaine and was later addicted to crack cocaine, on and off for about two years. But I finally quit, and don't really think much on it.

I have never truly left a woman, was always being left. It's good for the character, I believe. God for sure knows I understand why. In L.A., I was practically a broken man. I was overweight and bloated from whiskey, I chain-smoked cigarettes and ate a horrible diet. Women in Los Angeles could not stand me. I didn't touch a woman for years. When the pandemic of 2020 hit, I was barely holding on anyway.

After losing my job, the city was unattainable, un-survivable, apocalyptic. During the lockdowns, I met a woman over the internet and began a rather intense correspondence. Some months later, I vowed to marry her.

After Los Angeles, I lived in Portland, Oregon for two months with my mother as I prepared my journey out of America and into the unknown. Got into a horrible fight with my brother Stefan, went to the hospital, then went to jail on account of a domestic violence charge. It’s been sometime now, and we became close again. The girl I vowed to marry lived in Brasil, so I moved out of the United States for good and won't return. The woman's name is Yasmin, and she is now my wife. We live together and are happy, inseparable.

As for music, I mostly listen to the troubadour types, like Bob Dylan, Cash, Townes van Zandt, gritty-dirty folks like Lightnin' Hopkins and John Lee Hooker. Black or white, rednecks do make some of the best music. Also, the Stones and The Doors. Of course, there are many others.

For writing, there is Henry Miller and everybody else. For poets, it's Auden and Yeats, Baudelaire and Rimbaud. I have written rather extensively about painting—so I'll just say de Kooning has always led the way, as does Picasso and Bacon. Rauschenberg, too, for his endless, infinite assemblages.

My father was the greatest supporter of my work as an artist. My family, for the most part, thinks I am crazy and don't have a clue about art or music. I forgive them, they just don't know very much about those things. They wish me well—every artist knows this type of isolation. I am closest to my brother Stefan, who was always a decent, loving person. He has the spirit of an artist and is always encouraging me. He plays piano and is much more studious than I. Because he is my younger brother, I love him dearly.

Anyway, most of my work is more like a shout, a plea of desperation to keep the crows off my back—I must keep moving! Every word or brush stroke has something to do with survival. I look back at America and I think of turmoil, chaos, drunkenness, delusion, fraudulence, excess, decay. I think of love, childhood, billboards, daydreams. I will never forget what an American dollar looks like. America feels like a swirling tide of corporate logos, like in the political cartoons of anytime. I was grateful to be born in America. Why not be grateful for where I am now? Pride never had a damn thing to do with it.

My wife is the loveliest woman I have ever met, and she frequently has to remind me not to give up on the things I do. I think to myself—nobody reads anything, nobody looks at paintings, so forget about any of that. But that’s not true, of course. Doesn’t matter anyways, I will write and paint and make my art, even if nothing really matters. The fate of the artist has been sealed. No harm can come their way, and so what if it does? If everything can be reduced to nothing in a blink, why even worry?

Judson Stacy Vereen

2023

This is the closing essay of my latest book, Like A Bird Knows To Sing. You can read its introduction here.