Something for the weekend-All Hallows Eve

1. The eve of the witching hour,in which the front yard is suitably cobweb and corpse bedecked, sticky candy brims in a bucket head for the trick or treaters, and we are eagerly putting finishing touches to our costumes. Its a Batman themed event, so this year, Lani and I are going as Dark Knight foils-Poison Ivy and the Riddler.

2. Perhaps it was the weather or the fact that we were on the bones of our arse poor, but as a child, my families Halloween celebration extended to just ducking for apples and carving turnips-pumpkins being too much of a rarity or luxury item in 1970's England. Nevertheless, it was my favorite time of year, and my staple diet would have been the Pan book of Horror stories my Uncle Tony passed down to me, the Hammer double bills on a Friday night, and horror comic anthologies like The House of Mystery, House of Secrets and Weird Mystery.



3. As is customary, we held our own little Horror double bill last night, with the remarkable Swedish Vampire movie,Let the Right One in-which I'll review at another time-and the Hammer Horror classic the Vampire Lovers, starring Ingrid Pitt as the resurrected countess Camilla with more than a healthy appetite for buxom, young, virgin flesh. Vampire lesbians...whats not to love?

It also starred the quite lovely doe eyed Madeline Smith, who I was most smitten with in my younger days-I wonder why?

4. If there was a concession to Halloween American style when I was young, it was Charlie Browns great pumpkin patch, which is obligatory, wherever you are-Happy Halloween Everyone!!:

Notes from an easel-work in progress-the Valley stage eleven by David Gough

Progress may seem imperceptible, and even if I'm indulging neurosis, by the end, I may actually have something as crystaline as the bullet of that first vision.

Barrowboy-Sabbatical from my imagination

It would make a great title, but I've plumped for the less imaginative 'Two Dead Roses'
I like the dichotomy (my favourite word) in the fact that its a still life depicting death.

Meanwhile, its back to the cohesiveness of my series-The Valley feels about a day from completion, but its always such a eureka moment when I down my brushes and draw a line under 'The End', so it may drag a day beyond that. We'll see.

Notes from an Easel-two dead roses

It's odd how artistically legitimate painting a still life feels. How liberating it is-freeing the artist from the flourishes and intensity of concept, falling instead on the prop of form, light and hue to carry it.

Carried along with the passage of extinguishing time, watching two dying roses wilt under the studio lights was a welcome distraction from the negative energies of this past month for me, and very grounding as an exercise.

Which reminds me...It would be all too easy to dismiss Brett Anderson as just another bad Bowie wannabe, or worse-Gary Numan-except the song 'Still Life' from 93's Suede album, DogManStar, is at least worthy of anything in the dukes cannon:

Artifact-Tales of an Antiquarian-pulling the wings off faeries

If my series of mermaid paintings were a love sonnet to my wife, then the works that followed seemed a natural progression.

Bolstered by the brio of sales, and taking more than a leaf from the book of world domination-courtesy of my good friend Jasmine Becket Griffith, I repackaged my Urban Fairies as awkward, blitzed out-on-absinthe, little fae punkettes, too archaic for the modern world-prostituting themselves and their magiks to a society that had outgrown them.
Conceptually it was born from the brow of an X box-artistically, it was all very telling.

As in the piece-'Faeries do it better'-art had been relegated to the footnote of an alleyway wall.

The license deals followed*, and for a short time my thumb-tacked addition onto every angst ridden, emo's bedroom wall was assured, and words like integrity became replaced by words such as demographic.
Reinventing myself as a modern day Arthur Rackham with the Froud crowd, It became akin to pulling the wings from faeries, or at least-forging brass ones for my own back.
By the end of the whole wretched three years, I had been horribly shafted several times over by less reputable licensing companies, any reputation I had artistically was in tatters, and I had nothing but contempt for everything I had done.

Destiny-waiting for the wind to change- was exactly that, in the eternal waiting room of big breaks, I was starving for my turn.
I still am.


I retired the series in 05, with the aptly titled work-'Done'


Disillusioned, I retreated to the avant garde and the influences of my early years, to reconsider my next career move.
*To date-despite residual licenses,and those still making money from my work, I have received barely a cent, so should you find anything in stores with my name on that is not endorsed by myself-ie: figurines, journals, unsigned prints, T-shirts, cards, mugs, candles-etc... please do not buy it, I do not get royalty for any of it.

Gough Medicine-American Scream

'The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It's over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Vietnam.'
J. G. Ballard

Notes from an easel-work in progress-the Valley stage ten by David Gough

The effect of marbling the walls took real tenacity-several hours on my knees, almost nose to canvas. The last stroke will feel like falling upon an oasis after weeks lost in the desert. Not too far now.

Showboat-A short time ago, in a galaxy far, far in Hillcrest

Flying at the speed of an imperial X-wing fighter, and without the aid of a droid, we set down on the planet Hillcrest, and bartered with the sentient's at the Ruby Room canteen, where we encountered a vast array of units, but no sand people thankfully.
The night was an unexpected pleasure, and I'd like to thank Jasonn at City Beat, Sean and Brittni at the Ruby Room, Jill and Jordan for organizing what will be the final More Super event, and everyone who attended, ecspecially the friends and family members who turned out at a moments notice.
Here are a small smattering of shots from last evening, some courtesy of the lovely Jill-Good Luck in your new venture Jill!!

Show boat-May the Force with me.

A little impromptu show tonight has fallen in my lap this morning-courtesy of the More Super nites organizer Jill Johnson. Its her final event before she leaves for pastures new, but it's made all the more special in that it shall be also showcasing the talents of Star Wars artist Lee Kohse, as well as some special set pieces from the film. The venue is at the Ruby Room in San Diego, Hillcrest, where I showed earlier this year. I shall be setting up around 6.30 at the City Beat tent.
1271 University Avenue, between Richmond St and Vermont, San Diego, CA 92103

Notes from an easel-work in progress-the Valley stage nine by David Gough

'Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.'

Edgar Allen Poe

And Another Thing-Twatting

I absolutely believe that conversing through so called 'social network' sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Myspace, spells the downfall of literary discourse, to my mind, it is the proverbial (without verbage) inbred, retarded child in the basement, spouting inanity and mundanity, whilst masturbating before a window into the high street. It has no value for posterity, is the most puerile exercise in solipsism, and could for all 'intensive purposes' be the measured distemper of an orangutans toilet habit.
It is the preoccupation of narcissists attempting to elevate the mundane trickle of seconds to meaning, or those celebutantes who complain about photographic indiscretion whilst flashing more than a crotch shot across the digital highway.
Still, I am predisposed to the notions that perhaps Burroughs-were he alive-might have indulged it's streams of consciousness and draughted his next novel with its users asinine drivel, and that Eno once proposed that it was possible to have one brilliant thought a day.
If this all smacks of excuses, it probably is, which is to say that I am weak, and realise that an antique will end up collecting dust in a museum, and that my nose was never made to be detached in spite of my mush, so I have caved and am now the recipient of a 'twat', or a 'twit' or whatever...may I surpass the dirge it was made for. Still, in five years-really, who is going to 'remotely' care:

http://twitter.com/davidgoughart

Gough Medicine-Modern Life is Rubbish

'The three horrors of modern life - talk without meaning, desire without love, work without satisfaction.'

Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

Notes from an easel-part 37-Headscape

I completed the sketch this evening for what will appear on the cover of Steampunk magazine, which I wanted to share. I'm hoping that it will raise my profile a little, so that I am able to make the crossover to that ever elusive thing of actually getting paid to paint-if one can ever conceive of such a thing.
I think its a lovely addition to my skull series anyway.

Gough Medicine-Past

'The 'good old times' - all times when old are good.'

Byron

Notes from an easel-work in progress-the Valley stage eight by David Gough

I'm just beginning to see the brow of a steep climb, and the view looks glorious on the other side...

Object D' Art-Dark Vomit

On general release from today, is something which I believe shall be the flagship project for how art shall be viewed in the future. The Interactive Art Show Video game, is more than your trad shoot em up fare, consisting of fifteen artists-the San Diego Surrealists as I believe we shall be known-it includes, annexes of gallery rooms, host to a variety of subterranean denizens-curators of the nightmare visions by the artists in residence. Appropriately, my own area is a dank dungeon, and the scene of a decapitation by guillotine:

The Interactive Art Show

It was produced seemingly in the blink of an eye by fellow artist-Dark Vomit-Kelly Hutchinson, whose exceptional pop surreal painting is one of the many highlights of this project. His canvases are either inhabited by those terrifying symbols of many a childhood nightmare-garish, sneering clowns,such as the corporate avatars of capitalism- McDonalds and Jack, to the Joker and the puppet from the Saw movies. Or the icons of American tapestry, altered through the mutated multi-ocular lens of a mushroom trip, or emasculated like John Wayne in a dress for a cotton candy parade, all rendered with the deft brush of an old master in a classical setting.

http://www.darkvomit.com/

My favourite works, are those with the toy plastic dentures, rabidly snapping from the brittle necks of skeletons, riding crows or about to consume some cute chicklet-a momentary innocence lost to the jaws of death.

Artwork copyright of Dark Vomit ©-reproduced with kind permission

Unsurprisingly, he has just become the feature of a Juxtapoz article which you can read here:

'Knee Deep in Dark Vomit'

A big Thank you to Kelly for my inclusion in this very exciting project, to all the other artists for making the game a gallery powerhouse, and a special thanks to the really lovely artist-Celine, for giving me a tip of the hat to begin with.