Fallout

“How can I save my little boy
From Oppenheimer’s deadly toy?
There is no monopoly of common sense
On either side of the political fence” 

Russians- Sting

It’s that time of year again, the feast of samhain, the witching hour resurrection of spirits and classic horror video nasties on DVD.

I’m reminded of the time back in the early 80’s, when a psychological horror of a different kind consumed the metaphysical airwaves.

Back then, between ads for chocolate digestives and Danger Mouse, you could look forward to public information broadcasts informing you what to do in the event of a nuclear blast.

By the same guy who did voice overs for Barrett homes no less.




While the transmission of Threads in ’84, dismissed any hope that sanctuary could be sought in a cupboard under the stairs, it did instill the kind of paralyzing terror that would come to dwarf all the cheap thrills of late night Halloween horror.



I have youthful levity to thank for lessening the full gravity of days when bombing drills, meant my classmates and I  would have to hide under our desks.

But there was no escape, because it permeated culturally, everything steadfastly preparing us for annihilation, because even the our record collections echoed sirens songs for the end times. Everyone from Prince’s infectious carrion call to Party like its 1999 as a defiant final act of hedonism, through Frankie Goes to Hollywood-Two Tribes which adopted the air raid siren from public information broadcast as it’s opening salvo.*

By the time warnings about the radioactive clouds from Chernobyl’s liquefying core, had settled over European pastures, nothing could mollify the terrible forebodings of the ultimate zero sum game.

There’s some of that sense of dread in this latest work I feel, reanimated in an era assailed by the toxic unraveling of a deranged mind,trigger finger poised over the final reset button, and venerated by a host of pious followers, rapture ravenous for the vindication that might be wrought from total annihilation.

As I said in a post back in 2017-we are living “the consequence of longing for a period when things were purportedly ‘great’.

Because along with the desire to relive all the illusory days of maga-nificence ,with it’s bargain basement but equally dementia addled Reagan, come all that era’s terrible distemper’s. The past is littered with as much gore as it is glory, and like the my favorite horror story-Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein-reanimating the dead, can only ever bring with it the bitter stench of the grave.

*In writing this post, I was both nostalgic and a little alarmed recalling the chart fare I listened to of the period. The list could be compiled to make an End of the world party collection.

Prince-Party Like it’s 1999
OMD-Enola Gay
Alphaville-Forever Young
Ultravox-Dancing with tears in my eyes
Nena-99 Luftballons
Heaven 17-Lets all Make a Bomb
Billy Bragg-Between the Wars
Frankie Goes to Hollywood-Two Tribes
Kate Bush-Breathing Sisters of Mercy-Dominion/Mother Russia
Morrissey-Everyday is like Sunday
Scorpions-Winds of Change
The Clash-London Calling
David Bowie-When the Wind Blows
Sting-Russians
Peter Gabriel-Games without Frontiers
Duran Duran-Planet Earth
Mike and the Mechanics-Silent Running
The Fixx-Stand or Fall
Men at Work-Overkill

For your listening/watching pleasure, I’ve compiled the full list on YouTube:

Snake eyes

I’m working on a little diversion here- a side vent from the lava’s bubbling under current of Infernal.



Of course it’s for a show….yes, yes-I know I was no longer going to participate in group shows for the foreseeable future-but when the Dumbledore of Dark Art-Chet Zar invites you to the first ever Dark Art Society show at Copro, you don’t hesitate.

What’s with the Gorgon then? Ah well…all will be revealed soon, but I tell you my mind has felt like a nest of snakes (or in this case, eels) lately. Restless, tangled, fermenting.
It’s been like painting my physiognomy manifest.

The show will be opening just in time for the feast of Samhain month, and I’ll post full details along with the completed painting soon.

Toil and trouble fire burn and cauldron bubble

All Hallows upon us again, witches night. There may not be pyres of crowing hags, just the flickering candle light through the drooping hollow of carved pumpkins, but it pales against the incandescent burning of the midnight oil ahead of me, as I settle back into duties for Paradiso’s Fall, just five short months away.

I’m feeling like I’ll need eye of newt to accomplish everything I want to.

This is me working on a piece which looks like it could be ready and basted in time for Thanksgiving, but continues a  thread that I started on the Manson series regarding cults and the dangerous hive mind of group think. Salem, Jonestown, Heavens Gate, The Children of God, MAGAt’s.

Whatever  scary movie double bill you stream tonight, remember there is nothing so bone chilling as the horror of current world events.

Happy Samhain everyone.

All Hallows sneak peak trick or treat

 The feast before Samhain is with us once again, the Danse Macabre for the fabled Aos Sí. Not for me some anecdote on a haunted gallery theme night. Anything relative to 'darker' art's is relegated as tacky as year old candy in a rotten Jack o Lantern this time of year at any rate. Much to my cost and chagrin.

Still, the spirits run freely through the studio, dark corners move and spells are cast with the wave of a sable.

 And I revert to my natural state.

Happy All Hallows.

The Ghost of Vincent.

"The sadness will last forever."
Van Goghs proported final words to Theo

This shall be my first Halloween for some time that I am not exhibiting anywhere.  
Enough ghosts and demons currently in the studio at any rate. 

There's the ghost of Vincent for instance, pinned to my wall, glaring accusingly with one withering eye. The other one-his left one-is looking resigned, filled with marine-flecked melancholy and suffering. That particular eye haunts my own work right now, imposing itself into each canvas like the plucked orb of Horus. 

Did Vincent truly suffer I wonder? 

The romantique parable is of his self imposed exile in Arles amongst spud headed peasants, harboring Daddy issues and a gradual realization of the gargantuan shadow cast by Rembrandt, whilst his search to capture light in liquescence and Oriental line became the vainglorious quest of a failed alchemist. All on his brothers dime I might add, until he ravaged sibling good will and stipend on Absinthe, harlots and Japanese art prints. 
Not the suffering of brokeback tilling of fields from dusk till dawn with the peasants he gilded, or even the nine to five for poor old Vince, just the artifice of the syphilitic Libertine in a garret, the actor slumming it for the Academy. 

 Vincent the artist messiah, the flameheaded madman suffering needlessly, and dying penuriously wretched to save the future of contemporary Art. Vincent a standard bearer for greatness equated with drug addled, ritualized self sacrifice. Vincent the veritable Lou Reed of Modern Art. Vincent and the second shooter, because a death doesn't truly become a myth without a hefty (over)dose of conspiracy.

Mischievous brats with bad aim or not,there go Rothko,Pollock and his ilk making martyrs of us all.Or at least suffering taken to its histrionic, ignoble endpoint with Granto's trite Eye-jaculations;

The residual misery stain's the 20th century and beyond, thicker than impasto, making soothsayers of passive observers hoping to unravel an element of raw human truth amongst the chaos of stumbled ill rendering, whilst faded print's of sunflower's hang innocuously from a million vestibule wall's. 

Fuck you Vincent.

End times

As October and the Man/son show draw towards Hallows end, it seems as good a time as any to let you all know that this blog is going on hiatus. I couldn't tell you how long radio silence shall be in effect, but for a while now, I have been finding myself longing to return to the Luddism of paper journaling. 

I've grown weary of trying to shout over the noise, and there is an innate power in a certain silence which I miss, and need to explore again. 

What I can tell you is that behind the cyber curtain, I shall still be creating. Duties on Purgatorium shall recommence, which promises to be my most epic undertaking, comprising as it will 32 pieces in all. 
 The preparations alone, from the stockpile of books I want to research, to the actual job of putting paint on canvas, I envisage will take me well into 2014-endtimes willing. 

The good news for those inclined, is that postings on the Cielo Drive blog shall resume next month,as there are still threads to tie up in that regard. 
I shall also continue to occasionally post on facebook here .

 Which just leaves me to say thank you for sticking with me, through thick and thin, and in the meantime, should any radically, drastic news be forthcoming, you shall hear about it first. 

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.

Manson Show at Hyaena gallery in October.

Further to my previous post, I am delighted to reveal that I shall be showing my Manson/Tate themed works at the wonderful Hyaena gallery from October 1st, until October 31st, with an opening on the 6th. 

Which means that between now and then, I'll be firmly ensconced in my continuing research as well as realizing the pieces for the show. 

Part of the reason that my sister blog-one hundred and fifty Cielo drive-has been on hiatus is because I'll be revisiting my Liverpool hometown in July, which will take me to some places of interest-Hitlers presumed haunts, architectural sites, as well as the obligatory Lennon routes. At this stage, I'm not sure if the showcase will include just the paintings, or my research notes and journals, but I do foresee a possible book to tie it all together at a later date.

Far beyond our Halloween

Perhaps it was too bold a pronouncement, but I didn't complete the piece by All Hallows as I hoped I would-time eclipses ambition.


It can wait for another day.

For now, the Horror classics are queued and the Pumpkins are lit so...

Hellicious Halloween everyone.

The Beat Goes On-article in City Beat with David Gough

"Gough’s oil paintings are beautifully done narratives often dealing with the cruel inevitability of mortality...


There's a pretty solid interview and review of my book in San Diego City Beat today, courtesy of Kinsee Morlan.
We actually talked for almost an hour early the other morning, and despite only being on my third brew-she somehow managed to make my ramblings lucid..

Thank you Kinsee.

You can read the full transcript from the following:

Art Depicting Death, by Kinsee Morlan


OMA closing reception just two days away, clobber out of moth balls.

In between I've set myself the task of completing the painting I am now calling "An Artists Hommage-a general truth" before All hallows.

I may need to conjure spirits to help me.

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!!: