TOXIC’s Painting Style: From Subway Letters to Contemporary Art
Cover photo © Courtesy of Woodbury House
How a practice rooted in New York graffiti developed across more than four decades
TOXIC’s story began within New York’s graffiti culture, but his work did not end with the subway era. Born Torrick Ablack in the Bronx in 1965, TOXIC began writing graffiti at thirteen alongside friends including A-One and Kool Koor. He later became part of Tag Master Killers, the creative circle associated with Rammellzee. During the early 1980s, he also began exhibiting work made for galleries, establishing a studio practice that has continued for more than four decades.
Today, TOXIC works across surfaces including canvas, linen and paper, using materials such as spray paint and conventional paint. His work retains visible connections to writing culture while moving through abstraction, symbols, fragmented lettering and recurring figures. Understanding TOXIC’s painting therefore requires looking at graffiti as the beginning of his visual education, rather than the limit of his artistic identity.
Graffiti Was the Beginning, Not the Destination
TOXIC began writing across New York’s trains and walls while still a teenager. That environment introduced him to a culture in which style, originality and recognition mattered. Writers developed individual names and visual identities while responding to the work appearing throughout the city.
Graffiti remained an important foundation for TOXIC, but his practice began moving into gallery settings during the early 1980s. The Brooklyn Museum’s collection includes Ransom Note: CEE, a spray-paint-on-canvas work dating from 1984. Its existence demonstrates that TOXIC was already working on canvas during the period most closely associated with New York subway writing.
The move to canvas did not require him to erase his origins. Instead, it gave him another context in which to develop the marks, symbols and visual instincts that had emerged through writing.
From Readable Letters to Fragmented Forms
Elements of graffiti remain visible throughout TOXIC’s paintings, but they do not always operate as conventional, readable pieces. Letters may be broken apart, obscured or incorporated into larger compositions. Tags and symbols can appear alongside figures, lines and areas of colour, making language one component within a broader visual field.
Recent critical descriptions of TOXIC’s work have noted its use of coded symbols, fractured lettering and suspended figures. His gallery has similarly characterised the paintings through bold colour, movement and a meeting between graffiti and abstraction. These descriptions are useful because they acknowledge the work’s origins without reducing every painting to an enlarged graffiti piece.
Colour, Symbols and Layered Mark-Making
TOXIC’s paintings frequently bring together several kinds of visual information. Sprayed marks may sit beside painted lines. Recognisable symbols can coexist with shapes that resist an immediate reading. Figures and fragments of lettering may emerge from dense passages before disappearing back into the composition. Rather than presenting one clear message, the paintings often ask viewers to navigate between language, image and abstraction.
TOXIC has also continued returning to particular symbols throughout his practice. In recent conversations about his work, he has stressed that viewers may assign meanings to those symbols that differ from his own. That tension is important: the work contains recognisable signs, but it does not necessarily offer a single fixed interpretation.
A Practice in Continuous Development
It would be misleading to describe TOXIC’s career as a simple movement from graffiti into fine art, as though one practice ended and another began. His more recent exhibition, ALWAYS EVER SINCE 83, deliberately placed new paintings alongside historical works dating back to 1983. The exhibition’s premise was continuity: a practice that has developed over more than forty years without severing itself from its beginnings.
TOXIC continues to work with spray paint while also using linen, paper and other painting materials. His studio practice carries forward some of the tools and marks associated with graffiti, but employs them within compositions made for sustained viewing rather than the moving surface of a subway train. The result is not a rejection of graffiti. It is an expansion of what the artist can do with the visual language that first shaped him.
New York as a Visual Education
TOXIC grew up in the South Bronx during a period when writing was becoming increasingly visible across the city. In his interview with 12on12, he recalled becoming aware of graffiti while observing the wider environment around him:
“But when I started paying attention to graffiti… It just opened a whole new bag of tricks.”
The quotation matters because it presents graffiti as a discovery: a new system of marks, names and possibilities appearing within an environment he was already learning to understand. That early curiosity remains relevant to his later practice. His paintings continue to bring together different visual systems rather than settling into a single, easily classified style.
From Subway Culture to Museum Collections
TOXIC’s work has moved through several different contexts during his career. He exhibited in New York’s gallery world during the early 1980s and later participated in exhibitions internationally. His work has also entered museum collections.
The Brooklyn Museum holds his 1984 painting Ransom Note: CEE in its Contemporary Art collection. The work was specifically created for exhibition in a gallery, making it useful evidence of how artists associated with graffiti were already adapting their practices to canvas during the 1980s.
This institutional history does not make TOXIC important simply because a museum owns his work. It shows that his canvas practice is not a recent reinvention. It has existed alongside his graffiti history for decades.
TOXIC x The Rammellzee: Geo Metrodome
TOXIC’s continuing relationship with his artistic history is also visible in TOXIC x The Rammellzee: Geo Metrodome. The edition is built upon Rammellzee’s existing Geo Metrodome composition. For the release, TOXIC worked directly onto each print using spray paint and marker, adding his own marks, TMK-era tags and signature.
The edition comprises 20 prints and four artist’s proofs. Each was individually hand-finished by TOXIC, meaning that the embellishments differ from one work to another. The prints are posthumously signed by Rammellzee, hand-signed by TOXIC and accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity.
The underlying composition is Rammellzee’s own, rather than an example of TOXIC’s painting style. What TOXIC contributes is a new physical layer that places his hand, tags and shared TMK history into direct dialogue with Rammellzee’s image. Released in connection with TOXIC’s 2026 exhibition ALWAYS EVER SINCE 83, the edition brings a relationship formed during New York’s early graffiti culture into a new contemporary object.
Why TOXIC’s Painting Practice Matters
TOXIC’s career complicates any rigid separation between graffiti and contemporary painting. He began as a writer, but he was producing spray-painted canvases for gallery exhibition by the early 1980s. Over the decades that followed, his work continued to incorporate letters, symbols, figures, colour and abstraction.
His paintings should therefore not be treated merely as documents of a celebrated past. They belong to an ongoing practice—one that emerged from graffiti culture but has continued to change through sustained studio work. Looking closely at TOXIC’s paintings reveals neither a complete departure from writing nor a simple repetition of it. Instead, they show an artist continually reworking the forms, materials and ideas that have occupied him since his youth.
Frequently Asked Questions
What style of art does TOXIC create?
TOXIC creates contemporary paintings that combine elements associated with graffiti—including spray-painted marks, lettering and tags—with symbols, figures and abstract forms.
How did graffiti influence TOXIC’s paintings?
Graffiti provided the earliest context for TOXIC’s development as an artist. Letterforms, spray paint, individual marks and the importance of a recognisable visual identity remain relevant to his later canvas work.
Did TOXIC move from graffiti to painting?
TOXIC expanded into canvas-based work rather than simply replacing graffiti with painting. The Brooklyn Museum holds a spray-paint-on-canvas work by him dating from 1984, showing that his gallery practice was already established during the subway era.
Is TOXIC still creating art?
Yes. TOXIC continues to maintain an active studio practice. His 2026 solo exhibition ALWAYS EVER SINCE 83 brought together newly created paintings and selected historical works dating back to 1983.
Is TOXIC’s work held by a museum?
Yes. The Brooklyn Museum holds his 1984 painting Ransom Note: CEE in its Contemporary Art collection. It is not currently on view.
What is TOXIC x The Rammellzee: Geo Metrodome?
It is a limited edition built upon Rammellzee’s Geo Metrodome composition. TOXIC individually hand-finished each print with spray paint and marker, adding his own marks and TMK-era references. The edition consists of 20 prints and four artist’s proofs.
Continue Exploring
If you’d like to explore more of New York graffiti history and the artists who shaped it, continue with:
👉 Who Is TOXIC? From Bronx Graffiti Writer to Contemporary Artist
👉 TOXIC and New York Subway Graffiti: Inside the Culture That Shaped His Art
👉 Who Was Rammellzee? The Artist, Graffiti Writer, Musician & Visionary Explained
👉 How Rammellzee Influenced Hip Hop, Graffiti, Contemporary Art & Street Culture
