Myles Carter takes street art to the gallery

Myles Carter’s creative mission is to communicate. It’s in his blood, and his work has been on display, from train stations to galleries in Paris, for more than 40 years. This weekend, he brings his art to Boston, the place he currently calls home, for an opening at the Gallery at Spencer Lofts in Chelsea.

Carter was raised in New York City, the son of Janet Carter, an artist and gallerist, and Ron Carter, the jazz bassist most known for recording and touring with Miles Davis. Visual art is what clicked for Carter almost immediately, though–specifically the kind found on the exteriors of buildings and train stations in his home city.

“I noticed a difference if I took the train at 7:06 a.m., it was a Fred Flintstone character that would come through,’’ he says. “If I took the train at 7:12, it was the Campbell’s soup can graffiti that would appear. I always noticed the difference, and this was when I was eight or nine years old, taking the train to school in the morning.’’

From there, his interest skyrocketed, and he became a quick study. He enrolled at the Art Students League of New York by age 10, painting nudes and still lifes. At the same time, he pursued pottery and commercial illustration at The Carroll School. At age 11, he became a member of a graffiti crew called the Rolling Thunder Writers (RTW).

By the ‘80s, Carter had so much experience and work to his name that he became something of a street art pioneer in France, where he moved for a decade and is still regarded as a legend. But even the term “street artist’’ makes him chuckle, mostly because it didn’t even exist when he was first starting out. His perspective points all the way back to hieroglyphics as an early art form of graffiti, and he’s fully aware of the negative connotations the style has garnered through the years.

“Even look at sitcoms, or the TV world,’’ Carter says. “When they want to make a bad neighborhood, the first thing they do is add graffitti.’’

While the art form has come a long way, both in its style and reception, critics remain strong.

“As the people who were active and close to the scene became more vocal and more scene, so did the people who did not like it,’’ he says. “We always know who wins in that case.’’

Modern art forms evolved though, and so did Carter, who now gravitates more to the canvas than city walls. Many street artists use monikers, but Carter is not afraid to produce work under his real name. It’s a name that has become familiar in galleries from New York to Paris to Rio de Janeiro to Japan.

Like his father, Carter has conquered a largely wordless form of expression. He says that his father’s influence is translated through his own work ethic and tireless practice. It’s how Ron was able to communicate through notes on the neck of a bass, and it’s how Carter develops his own abstract language through tone and contrast of color.

“I might want to make the viewer’s eye see my canvas from top left to bottom right or bottom left to middle right and then back to the middle,’’ he says. “And doing this without telling them [explicitly]. If I can do that using my colors and moving my images, then I have created a relationship between me and the viewer without using words.’’

Carter hopes to build that relationship with the art community of Boston, where he has now lived for a few years. Sunday, he’ll open a solo exhibit at the Gallery at Spencer Lofts in Chelsea. He’ll be showing only work from 2015, in which he explores the harmony of color and says that his goal in creating was to “harness energy and put it on a canvas without lessening its energy level.’’

“It’s very free-form,’’ says Darlene DeVita, the gallery director at Spencer Lofts. “There’s no boundaries. It’s all done from the heart, and that’s what we see in Myles’s work.’’

Carter’s pieces will be up for sale at the exhibit, and for those who cannot make it to the opening, many of the pieces can be seen and purchased through the gallery website. But DeVita recommends seeing the work in the flesh for the full experience.

“When I saw his catalog, there was so much energy,’’ she says. “I like the way he uses a lot of the same symbols throughout his paintings, it sort of gives you that same idea of ‘tagging’ almost. You see things reappear over again in very different ways. But when you see these pieces stretched on canvas, you get a very real, organic look at them.’’

“Myles Carter: Paintings 2015’’ opens at the Gallery at Spencer Lofts in Chelsea on September 6 at 4 p.m. Free admission. His work will remain at the gallery through Saturday, October 3. For more info, visit galleryspencerlofts.com.

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