Like many kids, Colin Montgomery loves to paint and draw. His parents, clinical operations manager Lauren Foster and musician and recording engineer Mike Montgomery, have encouraged his creativity. Mike—who plays with rock bands R.Ring and Ampline and owns Candyland Recording Studio—has always loved making visual art too, creating band posters and screen-prints.
“When Colin was born, we were suddenly surrounded by children’s books full of bold colors, whimsical drawings, and wild, imaginative creatures,” he says. “I found myself falling back in love with doodling.” Father and son were soon making art together, often finishing each other’s pieces.
Art became a needed source of brightness during the pandemic when, following the family’s move into a new home, Foster was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer. “The climate in our isolation bubble was pretty dark and heavy,” Montgomery says. He and Colin, now 4, made hundreds of vibrant images to fill their bare walls.
Eventually, friends “who are what I would call actual artists,” says Montgomery, suggested they should exhibit the work in public. One of those friends is musician, poet, and Art Academy creative writing professor Matt Hart, who commissioned collaborative work by Mike and Colin for an issue of his DIY poetry journal Solid State.
“The thing that really draws me to their collaborations is that they’re cajoling each other to play,” says Hart. “The entanglement of Colin’s childhood imagination with Mike’s child-like adult mind keeps the work in a state of free association and playfulness. They’re Exquisite Corpse where nothing is hidden during the process. Everything is revealed, so everything is revelatory.”
This summer the pair took their work on the road for a joint show at Peel Gallery in Carrboro, North Carolina. That connection came through R.Ring, Montgomery’s band project with Kelley Deal of Dayton supergroup The Breeders. The duo scouted Peel Gallery as a possible venue for an album release show for their 2023 album, War Poems, We Rested. Drummer Laura King, who plays on the record, is based in nearby Chapel Hill.
While that show never came to fruition, Montgomery half-joked with gallery owner Lindsay Metivier, “If you ever want to do a show with 100 dad-and-kid pictures, let me know.” Metivier asked to see some work, liked it, and said, “Let’s do it.”
The show’s title, Eye Goop, Christmas Tick, and Other Names of Things, comes from Colin’s name for his doll’s canine bestie and a bug cartoon he dubbed Christmas Tick. “His mom hates ticks, so he’s always making jokes about ticks and showing her pictures of ticks in his insect book,” Montgomery says. “He loves to get her going.”
That sense of antagonism and absurdity infuses artwork that often amazes Montgomery with the unexpected directions Colin takes.
My son and I met up with Lauren, Colin, and Mike for a playdate at the Cincinnati Nature Center’s Schott Nature PlayScape. Talking to Colin’s parents as the boys terrorized daddy long-legs and floated sticks in the creek, I got the sense that the father/son artwork does much more than brighten their world. It captures, like fireflies in a jar, those ephemeral and fleeting child-parent interactions that punch you in the heart and run, leaving you reeling.
Some of the works layer Mike’s creative life as a musician with Colin’s creation of new worlds. Surreal figures float over guitar pedal schematics (Hart’s idea, commissioned for Solid State). A glaze-faced figure pulls headphones from his ear. Many are unadulterated imagination: brilliant, protean creations of a young mind. Entangled limbs. Bent forks. Robots, cacti, and giraffes. In an age when parents routinely max out their cloud storage with photos of their kids, these artworks capture a close relationship and intersecting inner lives. They’re intimate artifacts that urge you to paint and draw and play.
I wonder what Colin will think when he’s older, looking back on the experience of the Peel show, which was well attended, Montgomery says. Peel has agreed to continue to represent their work, selling both original pieces and art-quality prints.
“Whether he remembers the experience or not,” Lauren says, “it’s a neat opportunity, not one most 4-year-olds get. He just loves to draw and paint, so I do think it’s an enriching experience for him.”
As they left North Carolina after the gallery opening, Colin saw a college off the highway and asked what it was. Lauren explained that college is where people go after high school to learn a profession. He could one day go to college, if he wants, to become a doctor or an architect or anything he wants, she said.
“OK, Mom,” Colin said. “I’ll go to college. But I’m not going to become anything other than what I already am.”
Lauren asked what he is. And her son replied, “I’m an artist.”
Proceeds from the sale of Mike’s and Colin’s artwork through Peel Gallery go to Lauren Foster’s ongoing medical care. Donations for her care can be directly via Go Fund Me.
