Stylle Read is an itinerate Texas muralist. If you’ve driven West Texas, from the Stockyards in Fort Worth on to Cleburne, Hico, San Angelo, and finally Alpine (among other locations along the way) you may have noticed some of his monumental works adorning the walls of downtown buildings as you passed through.
I met Stylle, by happenstance, several years ago. I was enjoying a cup of coffee at a local shop in downtown Alpine. It was a beautiful fall day and my wife and I, sitting at a table outside, noticed Stylle across the way on a side street, holding a long handled paint roller and, like Captain Ahab confronting Moby Dick, facing the long side of an older mercantile building. I watched him work for awhile and couldn’t figure out what he was up to. He had no crew, and here he was, solo, in his 60’s, setting out to paint a huge wall white by himself. It didn’t make any sense.
So I trotted over to introduce myself, and, with his permission, began photographing. During which he told me his origin story and revealed that he was doing prep work for a new mural to add to the several in the downtown area he had painted over the years. Walking around town earlier, I had already seen many of them. They’re hard to miss.
Stylle is an artist/craftsman in the truest sense of those words, whose path and practice has run counter to the template so many art careerists today are wont to lean into. Back then, he had no gallery, no artist’s rep, no social media presence, and no work in museum or private collections. He was making art for the masses, not for the elite. The arduous physical aspect of his practice alone deserved one’s admiration. Stylle would be in his 70’s now. I’m not sure if he’s still painting murals. He no longer has a website. And still no social media feeds. His marketing strategy has been founded on face-to-face relationships, cultivated over many years. I told him the day I met him that I’d send some of the photos I taken to his email account, after which I almost immediately lost his address. My bad.
Recently, I sold one of the portraits I had taken of him back then to someone in Alpine who knew him. It’s one of my favorites. A good portrait captures not only a glimpse of who the subject really is, but the taker’s interpretation of who the subject is as well. To me, this likeness of Stylle represents the character of a man who has lived life according to his own unconventional script: Satisfied at the end of the day that he has played his role well, if not without hardship. Whether he would agree, I have no idea. But I would like to think that if he has had a chance, at this point, to see his friend’s acquisition, he would be pleased.
Fabulous work in all respects Pete!