NEW YORK -- Extending his artistic reach ever further, Mekons, Waco

Brother and newly minted solo artist Jon Langford recently unveiled a batch of

new paintings at a small record store in downtown Manhattan.

A modest gathering of Langford friends and superfans showed up on a recent

Friday at Other Music to toast the singer of the art-punk collective the Mekons

and his 11 new works, together called "Hard Country," most of which are

portraits of country music's forebears.

The display is made up of mostly "ink drawings on paper that are stuck down to

hardboard then painted on with various pastels, acrylics and white-out pens --

glazed with scummy transparent nicotine varnishes, gouged, scratched,

scraped and torn," Langford said.

With Hank Williams, Buck Owens, Jimmie Rodgers and Pasty Cline staring out

from high on the back wall, Johnny Cash on the stereo, and beer and chips

on the side, the event had the casual, friendly air of a swap meet.

The images themselves, despite wearing the yellowy glow of age, are all new.

All, that is, except for the Buck Owens, which Langford let languish in a Leeds,

England, cellar for five years -- "an essential part of the process," he said. They

wouldn't look out of place hanging by the kitchen in a truck-stop diner. "I use

bottles and bottles of acrylic varnish as [the works] have to be both dirty and

shiny at the same time to have any meaning for me," he said.

"These paintings speak to Jon's love of music in all its forms," said art patron

Mia Konphan, "and of history. And boozing."

The few non-portraits on the wall -- among them "Dance" and "Ingo Bingo

Sixpenny High" -- "borrow from square-dance calling," Langford wrote in an

e-mail.

Taken together, the works recall the dirty, shiny music on mid-period Mekons

albums such as Fear and Whiskey and Honky Tonkin', as well as

last year's Waco Brothers country-rock outing, Cowboy in Flames.

And they're selling fast -- five of the 11 works have been sold. "Hard Country"

was scheduled to remain on display through the end of March at Other Music,

15 E. 4th Street, N.Y., N.Y. 10003.