profile
DJ Lafon, Norman Kick Ass Man Oil on Canvas 60” x 61”
PROFILE:
DJ Lafon
by Grant Lacquement D.J. Lafon has been an active artist in central Oklahoma for more than forty years. He moved to Oklahoma in 1964 to chair the School of Art at East Central University. For the next twenty years, he taught art during the day and worked nights on his own projects. In 1984 he retired so that he could devote his time exclusively to his artistic work. While he has worked in ceramics and sculpture he is predominately a painter. His work is witty, very well executed, insightful and aesthetically appealing. While he has a unique representational style that is immediately recognizable, it is always fresh and unexpected. His work is broadly held in museums, and public and private collections. You can also often see his work in group and solo shows. Most recently he had a solo show at the excellent JRB Art at The Elms gallery in Oklahoma City. Despite health difficulties and decades of activity he still relishes the act of painting and works most every day for several hours. In addition to all of these external accomplishments he has developed many internal traits which I admire greatly. He is
the most humble and genuine person I have ever met in the field of art, and regardless of his life situation, he is invariably inquisitive, cheerful, and dedicated to his work. He has also spent his life in continual study and has a well-versed intellectual knowledge on virtually every subject. Recently, I visited him along with Dortha, his wife, at their rural east Norman home. The house is nestled among sheltering woods on rolling hills surrounded with self made sculpture. The process of arrival is like the perfect appetizer: tasty, but leaving you pregnant with anticipation for what is next. The house is filled with furniture and design objects of exceptional taste and every surface is covered with paintings, sculptures, or books. The eye has no place to rest and the effect is like the ornate surface of an icon; the entire place glows. I asked Lafon about teaching, what the meaning of working with students was for him, and how he felt he had affected them. He said “I’m always surprised when I do find out that I’ve inspired people to keep going and do something in their career. It’s not a huge
amount of people, but it’s always interesting to see how it came across because at the time it was not something you were concerned with. I did spend 23 years with teaching and in part it was a job. And I chose that job because I felt like you had a little free time during the day and I always kept something going. And then I always worked at night. So in a sense I had two jobs. I never did think of it as one job. I was a teacher and I was also an artist. I had a family to take care of and that seamed like a reasonable job and something I could handle, to some extent, how I used my time. I sort of set up my routine that way. I never thought of teaching as standing up in front of a group and talking. To me you kind of just showed them, you had to be an example of an artist. I just very simply said artists work, and they do art work. I don’t talk about it, and so I kind of had a rule – don’t talk over ten minutes. Just show them what you wanted them to do then let them do it.” I know Lafon has a very deep interest and concern about process; that the good things that happen in art are a direct result of the process, and I asked him if his teaching was about the process of being together making continued page 4
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