Thomas Christopher Haag was born in Wichita, Kansas into a family as vast as the sea. He took chemistry and math classes for some reason at the University of Kansas and then dropped out and started hitchhiking. He has lived in southern Mexico, Switzerland, India, Spain, the Pacific Northwest and the great American Southwest. For the past 15 years, he has been ridiculously involved and desperately in love with the New Mexico art scene, living and working in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Taos. When heʼs had to work, heʼs been a commercial diver, propman, art director, low-volume smuggler, curator and gallery owner. He also once worked for eleven days in a dog food factory where they made Kibblesʼ n Bits, but he prefers to paint. An avid muralist, both commissioned and not, he has painted buildings in Oaxaca, Barcelona, Venice, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Taos, Varanasi, Bangkok, Rangoon, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Oakland and many other places, under the names “Detach”, “Stove” and “El Pituitario”. He has exhibited with the likes of Shepard Fairey, Chaz Bojorquez, Swoon, Gaia, Slinkachu, Henry Chalfant, Mark Jenkins, Chris Stain, and Chip Thomas.

 

Using “reclaimed” house paint taken from chemical disposal facilities, found wood, and discarded books, he constructs multi-layered, collaged paintings and assemblages which reference ancient cultures and spiritual traditions, but with just a hint of smart-ass. Homages to criminal saints, a bodhisattva telling a fart joke, events of divine banality and cosmic significance, stripped of pretense or stuffed with it. Either way, it is all holy shit.