POST MORTIMER 25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Here it is at long last then, unfinished business, a monkey on my back, 25 years in the making.

I even knocked a special little trailer together, in the vintage style of all those late night thrillers from the period 1979.  Such were my ambitions back in the days of 1995, I  envisioned David Croneberg would direct if it had been optioned to film, and Gary Oldman would have played the old pathological pathologist, Sue Johnson his wife Joan, and Nicole Kidman the luscious visage of Lucinda.



While we can dream what that might have looked like, here’s the completed graphic novel, cleaned up,completely re lettered digitally, and available for the very first time, in its 86 page glory.

POST MORTIMER

Living Proof

It’s true, April had a few momentary troughs.  And a very rain sodden May more than it’s usual grays.  Except to say-my demise greatly exaggerated-I haven’t disappeared into the downy dumps of the usual post show funk.

I mean can anyone feel dour when sitting opposite this daily vision of morning loveliness?  And if my wife Lani seems otherwise occupied, it gets pretty damn exciting when you realize what she is engrossed in.
About which, more details to follow.
What else?

I’ve been silently plotting, quite literally as I begin writing duties on an art book titled Trinity, which will be a collected volume of the three series, Purgatorium, Paradiso’s Fall and the upcoming Infernal, which I am hoping to release in time for the next show I am preparing for in 2021.

And finally, it’s been a long time coming, but you may have noted that my store is now at long last, up and running, and includes a wide selection of original art, signed prints and art catalogues, with more to be added, so keep a keen eye for updates and you know, support living artists.

SHOP HERE

Paradiso’s End

And so the show is a wrap, off the walls, down but not forsaken. Whilst I return to the studio ashes, future plans include the final sequence of the proposed trilogy-more about which to follow- an art book compiling the three, and a reanimated graphic novel, 25 years in the making.

Onwards then.

In the meantime, if you missed seeing the show in person, here are all the paintings that comprised Paradiso’s Fall.

The Death Eaters 48″ x 36″ – Oil on canvas (2019)

The Death Eaters 48″ x 36″ – Oil on canvas (2019)

The Death Eaters 48″ x 36″ – Oil on canvas (2019)

The Death Eaters 48″ x 36″ – Oil on canvas (2019)

Origins of a Black Hole 36″ x 48″ – Oil on canvas (2019)

Origins of a Black Hole 36″ x 48″ – Oil on canvas (2019)

The Origins of Death 36″ x 48″ – Oil on canvas (2019)

Ages of Hopeless End 48″ x 36″ – Oil on canvas (2019)

For Want of Other Prey 36″ x 48″ – Oil on canvas (2019)

The death of Manson

You know, a long time ago being crazy meant something. Nowadays everybody’s crazy.

Charles Manson

“Something Witchy” (2012) Oil on canvas, 11″ x 14″

So Charlie-the self proclaimed “God of Fuck”-has finally left this mortal coil. I’ve already said everything I thought I had to say in that regard, but I guess I ought to share my thoughts since so many comments were curious what those where now he has passed.

Whether one wants to believe that Manson was a mind-controlled, puppet messiah, programmed to terminate the hippie dream, or a patsy prophet, he certainly shouldn’t be lionized or vindicated, regardless of how ultimately complicit he was in snuffing the lives of Stephen Parent, Jay Sebring, Abigail Folger, Wojciech Frykowski, Sharon Tate, Paul Polanski, Leno LaBianca and Rosemary LaBianca.

One thing is certain, Manson was an able and charismatic grifter with the gift of the gibber gab. A pontificate who stoked a climate of paranoia, hatred and apocalyptic level fear to a group of gullible and disenfranchised cult disciples, who would go on to do something truly diabolical in his name.

For myself, it is a welcome reminder to be mindful of parallels, of false prophets who profiteer, because it seems no less apropos, that Manson dies in the era that he does.

You can see the entire series I produced for the 2012 solo exhibit at Hyaena Gallery from the following:

Man/son and the haunting of the American Madonna 

Or watch my interview expounding my research on the Manson case, in John Borowski’s Serial Killer Culture streaming on Amazon Prime.

Or read the art book I compiled from my research:

RISE

Van Gough's inspiration's and alchemy

Inspired and at the behest of a recent facebook post by my talented daughter-Emma-above is a stack of current obsessions feeding the artistic alchemy. 

By virtue of abundance, it's not quite as diverse or impressive as  Bowie's top 100 list of books, which appeared this week and which I was happy to note does include one of the tomes on my own current pile.

Depending on the canvas consuming me at the time, the list is generally interchangeable of course, and most of the books are digested purely for invocation,  but as latitude and longitute into the geography of the new series, it's a pretty good GPS.

The list from top left is as follows:

Salvador Dali-50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship
Valazquez, the technique of genius by Jonathan Brown and Carmen Garrido
The Encyclopedia of Mythology by Arthur Cotterell
The PreRaphaelites by Trewin Copplestone
The Divine Comedy with Illustrations by Gustav Dore (translation by Henry W. Longfellow)
The complete works of Shakespeare
Images of Horror and Fantasy by Gert Schiff
Creepy presents Richard Corben-the definitive collection of the artist's work from Creepy and Eerie!
On Ugliness by Umberto Eco
Art of the Late Middle Ages by Hans H. Hofstatter
Van Gogh a self-portrait. Letters revealing his life as a painter selected by W.H.Auden
The Devil-the Archfiend in Art from the sixth to the sixteenth century by Luther Link
The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte
Purgatorio by Dante Alighieri
The Secret Temple-Masons, Mysteries and the founding of America by Peter Levenda
Portrait of the Artist as ab young man and the Dubliners by James Joyce
Like you've never been away by Paul Trevor

Rise-Man/son and the Haunting of the American Madonna.

On February 18th, it shall be 41 years since the death sentence of Charles Manson and his three followers was revoked to life imprisonment. Its seems almost timely then, that as a reminder of why he and his murderous cohorts were incarcerated, I am pleased to announce that I am releasing my second art book-Rise: Man/son and the Haunting of the American Madonna, which will include art from last years exhibition, along with annotations, sketches and notes that accompanied the series.

More details to follow.

Postcards from the Edge

Postcards for the show arrived today, and the shit suddenly felt real. Paint spattered in my studio headspace for eleven hour stretches, its easy to forget the endgame, which is no bad thing.

Dead/Ends Announcement : David Buckley

For those who have been inquiring about my book-'Dead/Ends' which was originally scheduled for online release today, there has been a small delay of a month or so.

One of the reasons is because we are now going to be fortunate enough to have a contribution by none other than David Buckley, who shall be writing the foreword.

For the uninitiated, David is a tremendous writer and biographer, whose credits include 'R.E.M. - Fiction: an Alternative Biography', 'The Thrill Of It All: the Biography of Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music', 'No Mercy: the Authorised and Uncensored Biography of the Stranglers' and the wonderful 'Strange Fascination: David Bowie-the definitive story'-the latter being what I consider the uncontested authoritative work on the Thin White Duke. As if that isn't enough he is also a regular contributor to Mojo magazine as well as writing the official sleeve notes on major Bowie reissues such as 'Ziggy Stardust', 'Diamond Dogs' and 'Young Americans', and currently he is working on a bio "Electric Dreams- the Human League, Heaven 17 and the Sound Of The Steel City", scheduled around the time of the 30th anniversary of "Dare"

A full bibliography is available to read and purchase here:

David Buckley Amazon List

As well as sharing a mutual regard for all things Bowie related, we also both grew up in Liverpool in the Seventies and so this is very exciting and something we are hugely appreciative of.

More news about the official release date for Dead/Ends coming soon.

Dead / Ends by David Gough-a taster part two

Continuing with preparations for the forthcoming release of my book-Dead/Ends-here is another exclusive excerpt for you to read.
I shall also be making an announcement in the coming weeks with regards to a special contribution from an esteemed writer. More to follow soon.

FINDING / DOG

"When I was 16 I became all consumed with getting high-anything to elevate myself from the gray dirge of provinciality, anything to get me closer to knock, knocking on heavens door, and finding God in a ring of fire or the Garden of Earthly delights.

Sitting in a circle sparking a spliff did nothing for me, it had to be the total mindgasm of hallucinogenic submission.

I’d tried unsuccessfully with a girl I was fond of on my Art course, after we’d convinced ourselves some fungus in the adjoining field held promise. Unfortunately, it provoked nothing more than a puking session in the adjoining toilets.

Finally, at a party in some ghastly council house backwater, magic mushrooms were procured at which point without prompting, I chomped the little black headed veggies like candy, before swilling the gritty remnants from a cheap beer can.

An hour later, and I’m in the midst of a spastic freak out, convinced that the Cyprus trees across the road, are involved in a brutal fight to the death. I am consumed by mortal terror at the sight of this, & take flight, avoiding the valley chasms that are opening between gaps in the pavement, and marveling at my ability to traverse them.
Somehow, and it felt like days but could have been hours, I find my way home, and am met by the neighborhood mutt who stands between myself and my front door.

The little dogs head inflates like a balloon and I dwarf beneath its bulbous magnificence.

No ring of fire, no God, just a little sausage dog with a fifty foot head."

Dead / Ends by David Gough-a taster part one

All being well, my book-Dead/Ends shall be receiving it's premier release on April 30th, and so in the intervening weeks, I shall be posting exclusive excerpts from it. Please note that the following is as yet unedited and may differ slightly in it's final incarnation.

Death/Mask

"We moved three times when I was young.

The first time, was to a Victorian Terrace in Toxteth, Liverpool.

It had an outside toilet, a coal-bunker and rooms you could still refer to as a parlor and vestibule. Of course it was pretty dilapidated, and as more of the neighborhood tenants moved out, leaving the adjacent houses vacant, the rodents moved in.

My hysterical, irrational fear of rats began there.

I would have been five when upon investigating a tapping noise in the electric meter cupboard, a large brown rat fell as unceremoniously, as only a rat can, into my lap.
Its pink worm like tail twitched, as a bubble of spittle and blood formed on its greasy, gray lips, from the poison it had ingested.

In that moment I felt an epiphany, as all of my understanding of what it meant to die, seemed crystalline in the revulsion and horror I felt from that point, because in those black beaded eyes that rolled to yellow white, I realized that death had a face."

Dead / Ends book by David Gough

So here we have it-thirty two pages, filled with twenty five color plates and complimented by annotations and anecdotes, and self published on my own Darq Matter imprint-I am finally able to reveal the cover for my upcoming Dead/Ends book, along with the blurbage that accompanies it:

"In 2005 artist David Gough left his English roots to live and work in America. Affected by what he saw as extreme fundamentalism in the media, he began a body of works entitled the Theothanatos series which would deal with broad questions of religious dogma and human origin.

However as the series developed, he began to confront more existential questions of his own mortality, bringing to the fore memories of personal loss and an obsession with the human skull and the number three.

This volume collects together twenty five works as well as the annotations and recollections that shaped the series."

At this stage and if all goes according to plan, I am aiming for a full release April 30th, which will be available through my site as well as several online outlets, as well as a possible show to accompany it sometime in May. I'll also be publishing small excerpts in the run up to release here, so you know drill by now, stay tuned as there are more details to follow.

Best Laid Plans

Composed this sketch for one of my next pieces, which for various reasons I am calling 'Chimera Rising'. The basic framework is there, but I'm looking forward to developing the piece, before I commit it to oils.

Speaking of which, I wish I could share the daily's from my easel, but the shots with the crappy camera I've been using are so sub par, as to be pointless. You shall just have to take my word for it when I say it's looking like one of the best thing's I've done.
Yes I know, I always say that, but it's true. You'll see.

I'm also continuing work on my book, which is coming along slower than I'd hoped, if only because the task of condensing so many anecdotes is a monumental one. Suffice to say that it should see the light of day at the beginning of March.

Enough projects to shake a sable at, no need to watch paint dry then.

Art Booking Trend

Spent most of the day at Borders for research, flicking through the arts and culture sections,either immersed in magazines or trying to convince myself I don't need another sketchbook.

I think I may have a serious problem in that regard, since I caved and bought myself a pocket sized Moleskine-they were on sale.

I have around a dozen sketchbooks on my studio shelf already, at various stages of completion, much to my wife's bemusement.

Its an odd quirk I have, the need to start a new one before I've completed the last, as if I were having some sort of external reboot on my creativity, or capping a certain point in time.

The research was for my book, which is coming along nicely. It features around twenty of my most recent works, complimented by biographical anecdotes and annotations, and all being well, I'll have it done in time for Christmas. I wish I could post the cover, because it's awesome, but I'm wanting to keep it under wraps until it's available.
Writing biography is oddly disconcerting, a counterpoint to what I do with painting, using metaphor as camouflage-and I so don't want it to be down, more laden with irony, so I'm taking my cues from my dog eared stalwart-Salvador Dali, the unspeakable confessions of. I've read the book once a year, ever since discovering it when I was sixteen-it's eminently quotable, completely batty and salacious in the way every good biog should be, although my own shall probably have closer allusions to the parochial Alan Bennett.

I'm also working on rearranging my studio to maximize the space, lugging the monster office table that was here when we inherited the property and removing the massive closet doors that never worked. I realize its the wrong month for a spring clean, but as you can tell, I'm feeling like a fresh start.