That’s me speaking from my latest interview with Dahlia Jane for her newly relaunched Upon a Midnight Dreary site.
She’s a dear friend, and we go back donkeys years, or at least not
too far back to the days when I couldn’t get arrested, let alone any
interest in a show. Thankfully, she didn’t let that stop her, and in
fact this excellent article she penned, was the only notable exception to the complete indifference for my Purgatorium show back in 2014.
She’s been radio silent for a few years, plotting her next move, but
in her absence, the blogosphere has filled up the void with dark art
podcasts and the like, but I maintain she was the first, so they are all
really just riding her coattails.
At any rate, she’s bringing her original blog back, as a chronicle
for how artists busy themselves in such times as we live in, and I’m
honored to be among the first to be included.
So here it is, in which I chat about daubing during Covidolation, my
next series “Infernal”, Fred and Rose West, toilet paper and more.
Give it a gander and spread it about, but please stay home while doing it.
” Those midwives to history, put on their bloody robes"
― David Bowie-Teenage Wildlife.
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been
bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle.
We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has
captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves,
that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you
almost never get it back.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
A fellow artist recently noted , how prescient my prior series must seem, given the times we find ourselves in. Another friend charitably referred to me as a conduit.
Believe me, it gives me little comfort to see the turmoil of my inner
landscape, reflected on any real one. And following that train for a
moment, I should perhaps be more than a little unnerved, given that the
new series is subtitled “the denouement”.
Except, as someone who see’s themselves as possibly more of an
anthropologist than an artist, I’m no more unique than anyone who views
history as just writing on the wall.
For instance, here’s a particularly unpleasant character whose been
seeding her way through my sketches for quite a few years now. With her
withering stink eye, I suppose she’s come to represent a certain, old,
righteous indignation. A glowering factotum, judging disapprovingly at
the viewers prying gaze from beneath her cowl, whilst yielding fealty to
the most reprehensible of deeds.
There’s a lot of that about lately, given that a whole segment of society clings to the boast that 100,000 deaths would be the results of someone performing a very good job, whilst another sits blissfully deluded by the notion that C-19 is all just a conspiratorial hoax.
We should all be so lucky.
At any rate, I’ve no doubt that heat they feel, isn’t just from feet
being held to the fire, but the dial turning all the way up to total
hell unleashed on earth.
So whilst we wait for the full toll, I entreat everyone to stay safe, stay home and make a sanctuary of yourself.
