Art Decade 2009-2019

“I wish I could spend my days, lost in the pursuit of paint, all in the name of a greater journey-THAT greater journey.”
Me-November 18th 2009

(Top) “Legend” (2009)-oil on canvas | 30″ x 40″

A decade closing then. Time to take personal stock. Tally the gains against the losses. Measure the clock, along with the lines on your face, and the marks on the canvas.

I’ve been doing my own introspection of the whole retrospection lately, diving through decades old blog posts, and for all the highs, lows, occasional navel gazing, pretentious waffle and daubed missteps, the one constant ally has been the work. The eradicable drive to continue on the painted quest against sometimes insurmountable odds. At times it’s felt hopeless, like total folly, at others a sanctuary of illumination, but always a restless, fathomless pursuit for meaning in this mad, bad thing called life.

I imagine all this means that for myself, the muse and the rest of you still willing to enjoy what I do, we are stuck with one another until we all fall down, or are blown to smithereens.
Nevertheless, my gratitude is as boundless as the event horizon, for those who’ve stuck with and supported me this far.

Here then, is a piece from each year-souvenirs that mark my greater journey.

Theothanatos | Ghosts | Man/son | Purgatorium | La Bodega | Paradiso’s Fall

Legacy-an Artists General Truth-(2011)–Oil on Canvas | 48″x24″

“Osmosis” (2011)-oil on canvas | 36″ x 24″

“Rise” (2012)-oil on canvas | 30″ x 40″

“What’s Past is Prologue” (2013)-oil on canvas | 36″ x 48″

“This Thing of Darkness, I Acknowledge Mine” (2014)-oil on canvas | 36″ x 48″

“The Devil” (2015)-oil on canvas |36″ x 48″

“Leviathan” (2016)-oil on canvas | 42″ x 80″

“Wrath” (2017)-oil on canvas | 36″ x 48″

“The Voyage of Elen” (2018)-oil on canvas | 36″ x 48″

“Origins of a Black Hole” (2019)-oil on canvas | 36″ x 48″

View from Abridge

“People were already beginning to forget, what horrible suffering the war had brought them. I did not want to cause fear and panic, but to let them know how dreadful war is, and to stimulate peoples powers of resistance”
Otto Dix.

“What’s the bravest thing you ever did?
He spat in the road a bloody phlegm. Getting up this morning, he said.”

Cormac McCarthy, The Road

So details for my part, 2019, the stillborn Paradiso’s fall an abridged version.
Resembles a Lynchian comic strip, or the trimester of  something unspeakable.
A fairly accurate summary of the year then, peering as we are, back into the black abyss of a decade, that began with such promise, but as Chuck Palahnuik once mooted, switched to being a threat.
For myself, that means the future holds no better prospect than the paint that will continue to flow in tandem with the inevitable deluge of blood and tears the coming era will define.

See you all on the other side of the easel then.

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)

Paradiso’s Fall Opening. Artist Reception-March 9th

So you do a show, and of course you hope that somehow the planets will align. That people come and like what they see. That your work will connect with the visitors, and hopefully make a few sales, cover your costs, and if it all falls short of your hopes, then you’ve still done the graft at the end of the day, because the doing is ultimately the reason for the season.

Except, after years of accepting your lot-when it goes beyond that, when your hopes are surpassed , it can be every bit as paralyzing as disappointment. Which is why it’s taken me over a week to to say that I’m feeling flabbergasted-humbled-incredibly blessed.  The friends, the visitors, the collectors, my fellow artists, the curators Jeremy Schott and Jeremy Cross, my wife Lani…my mad gratitude.

You can see previews of the show Here
Paradiso’s Fall closes at The Dark Art Emporium- March 30th.

 

 

With Vincent Castiglia

With Evgenia Golik

With Tatomir Pitariu and Bill Shafer of Hyaena

With Chet Zar

 

With Lani

Beautiful Bizarre Magazine Interview

“So Paradiso’s Fall came to represent that dark desire that is innate within us all. That the correlation as an artist to change our external reality, to deconstruct so to represent our interior world, extends beyond the canvas, throughout mankind as a very fundamental human function.”
Speaking to Beautiful Bizarre.

And I mean, how splendid is this? In which I talk a little about my process for the series, dark art, living and working in Julian and future plans. There’s also a small preview of some of the pieces.

READ THE INTERVIEW HERE

I have to say, the publicity surrounding this show has completely bowled me over. After a decade of unveiling shows in a vacuum of seeming indifference, it’s been like a revelation. I am beside myself with gratitude. Thank you BB, Bella Harris, and Jeremy’s Schott and Cross of Dark Art Emporium. Just Stellar.

Two more nerve wracked sleeps before showtime, and all will be revealed.

Paradiso’s Fall-Trailer 2

Another little video feature, in which I talk about death and the art of living. Just some of the motivation for the piece “Whats Dark Within, Illuminate” for the show Paradiso’s Fall, this Saturday at Dark Art Emporium

Paradiso’s Fall First Trailer

Here’s something really cool-an epic teaser for the main event, something to whet the appetite.

Which is why I am delighted and honored by the stellar promotional video, that Dark Art Emporium has put together for my forthcoming show.

Concise, informative, beautifully edited, cuts to heart of my intentions, and best of all, I only appear in it handful of time over the four or so minutes.
But check out the art for Paradiso’s Fall, which I am immensely proud of.

A big thank you to both curators Jeremy Schott and Jeremy Cross.

Paleozoic periods

 "And my essays lying scattered on the floor
Fulfil their needs just by being there"

David Bowie-Conversation Piece

That's it, the final flourish-my daubed initials alongside a scuttering trilobite. A little primordial arachnomorph, peering out from the corner of a bygone time. 

An apt note to end the series on then. 

He's also a call back to all of those gorgeously illustrated dinosaur books I had as a child, a relic from my own Paleozoic period if you will. Long gone to some netherland, dusty token corner of the internet, which I inevitably pored over before I began the series. 

Actually, if you look at my piece 'Space Enough Have I, to Lie in Such a Prison" from my last series-Purgatorium-you can see a little Archaeopteryx and Eohippus, in what is ultimately a thread between the two collections.

Speaking of seminal beginnings, I finally caught the excellent Bowie documentary-'Finding Fame'. 
It reminded me that in an older blog post (which is hard to believe is almost a decade ago now) I'd wondered" Pre Ziggy...What spurred that self belief?" 

What struck me, was for all of David Jones's early missteps,through excruciating novelty Gnome records and mime, were the seeds of sustained, exploratory fearlessness he  possessed of creative self discovery and illumination.For him, what started as a vehicle for some sort of notoriety, manifested into creating for the spirit of the mere act of creating itself, as a way of destroying the self..

Coming at the tail end of my own series, about mans compulsive nature for creation and destruction, it's a sentiment I both adhere and relate to. 

Certainly, his passing in 2016 and his final album has informed this entire body of work.

Just over a fortnight to go before the unveiling, and all the final preparation still ahead of me. 

In every sense.


 

Origin of Origin

Back to where it all started, the final piece of the series, or 'The Origins of Life' to give it, it's full title. This one goes all the way back to November 2016, which I mothballed when I began formulating plans for Paradiso's Fall. I hadn't intended it to be part of this series until I pulled it out again to actually paint over, and realized it totally followed the arc of the collection. I guess given the month and year it was manifested in should have been a clue.

I've retooled it somewhat, but when it's finished, I want it to sit with 'The Origin of Death' and 'Origins of a Black Hole' to form a part of a triptych-a terrible trinity if you will. 

In between, I've been ladling on the varnish which for me is the absolute worst part of the process. One cannot describe enough, the full existential horror of pouring thick wads of syrup on something you have meticulously worked on, only to discover what amounts to a thicket of cat dander,like a transporter bay of Tribble's appearing in the atmosphere. My cat Ronin, cares not a jot.
At any rate,I have resolved that my next series shall be completed in a Dexter styled kill room.

It's hard to believe I'm already anticipating that far.

Paradiso Poster

Coming soon, to a select gallery in Long Beach…


“Following directly on from my previous series (‘Pergatorium’), “Paradiso’s Fall” utilizes elements from Milton’s classic work, and the corruption of Eden as a mythological set piece for my own autumn of years, the fall of man, and the prevailing dark age we live in. Through this series of paintings that are ill omens to the end times, the work is a meditation on mans appetite for self destruction, against the dichotomy of the ‘artist’s’ creative predisposition to deconstruct.”

-David Van Gough

“The thing I most love about David Van Goughs work is his use of symbols. Each paintings is a smorgasbord of images and all of them have a highly intentional and elegant part to play in the story he is telling. From the twisted, Bosch like creatures to the weather in the sky beyond. It all relates, like a fantastic jigsaw puzzle that has no corners, we are left with the joyful duty of finding how each defines the next until the underlying meaning, or at least how we perceive it, finds its way into view. But what keeps us digging is the skill with which each piece of that puzzle is created. The man can paint.”

– Jeremy Cross
Assistant Director – The Dark Art Emporium

And I mean how effing cool is the poster?

The piece he’s chosen to promote the series is called ‘Origins of a Black Hole”, and the ex designer in me, must admit to gritting my teeth through some designs submitted for past shows I’ve been involved with.
Lest we forget the aesthetic horrors of the now defunct gallery that promoted my show using brush script.
It’s to the Assistant Director Jeremy Cross‘s credit however, that he’s taken one of my pieces and complimented it perfectly. Thank you Jeremy.

Jeremy himself is a wonderful outlier artist by the way, I implore you to check out his darkly idiosyncratic works.
http://jeremycross.bigcartel.com/

Title Series

It's a month away until showtime.

Even the icy tundra of the early morning studio, can't deter me from the last haul, as I defrost, warming my hands by the space heater, and with bottomless mugs of tea . 

As the final piece nestles on the easel, the juggling frenzy of photographing the pieces and varnishing them before framing extends the working day, long into the evening. 

It's afforded me the distance of looking over the entire collection, without that constant niggling feeling that I want to tickle a corner or start over. 

I can tell you that the material comprises what I believe to be some of my most powerful, unsettling and uncompromising work to date. Truly, serpentine anima for the dark period it's been created in.

I'm very happy and proud of the whole series.

Whilst I can't reveal the works yet, the titles at least should give you some semblance of what to expect. As the Tempest was to Purgatorium, some of the titles for Paradiso's Fall are taken from passages of Milton's Paradise Lost. Others were directed from specific content. Here then-in the order I hope to exhibit them-are the titles.

1 What's Dark Within, Illuminate.

2 Where Death and Nature Breeds

3 The Voyage of Elen

4 The Death Eaters

5 The Origins of Life

6 The Origins of Death

7 Origins of a Black Hole

8 Ages of Hopeless End

9 For Want of Other Prey

Other possible titles were 'To Put it Mildly', 'Long and Prayerful Consideration' 'Chaos Judge the Strife' and 'Sacrament of the White Knights', so make of those what you will.
 

Also uncompromising, was Tomi Ungerer, who I read with real sadness, passed away recently. As I wrote in a previous post from 2009, upon first seeing Tomi's work in his book-Testament-at Liverpool's library in the 1980's had a profound effect on me. "his work peels back the thinly veiled skin to reveal the stark bone of societies distemper beneath."

And whilst some would say that 87 years of age is a good innings, it seems pretty unfair that he's gone, given a certain former 'reality' TV host still breathes to spread misery and woe, but then I guess as with Newtons third law, 'everything has an equal and opposite reaction'

I highly recommend 'Far out isn't far enough' if you haven't seen it-I think it was on Netflix, but beg, borrow or steal a copy.

Sugar Buzz

Back after a bout of dreadful lurgy following my holiday sabbatical home. Home by turns wasn't so sad, but magic,idyllic- all the Raymond Briggsesque, warm family hearth of brewing parochial Englishness I could hope for. 

So here I am, mid January 2019, sequestered in the studio once more,frantically staring down the barrel with less than the final two months to go before the opening. Lumee!!  No more did that reality descend like a vampires teeth, than when opening the pages of the latest Hi Fructose magazine, and this rather lovely snippet confronted me. 

It's a big deal, an honor and very welcome first as things go. Thank you HF and Dark Art Emporium, a much needed sugar buzz, that other high energy drinks fail to.

Still two more pieces to go, so no time to lose before showtime.

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.

The Divine and the Divined

18″x 18″
Oil on panel

My own contribution from the recent Tales from the Darkside show at LaBodega.

Rather drolly-or should I say troll-y, I got some push back on this when I posted it on social media from the usual self righteous quarters. How oddly ironic, that the dogmatic ever entreat that they be accepted in every faction of existence, yet never seem willing to extend the same courtesy themselves. 

Happy Holidays from Starbucks anyone?

Regardless, they are a ways off the mark in their usual bobble headed outrage for this one.
It was originally planned for the series I’m working on “Paradiso’s Fall”, which has become something of a vignette of ill omens, pointing towards what I perceive as man kinds inevitable demise. I’m hearing the term “personal apocalypse” coined a lot since I first used it some months back, but I believe it’s a predisposition inherent within us all.

This piece, portraying the mother-the holy vessel or paragon of virtue, literally transformed to the symbol of that final nail, is just merely another emblem of a paternally manifested future, inherently pushed to its own end. If you’d have said “Enola Gay” and “Little Man”you’d have been on the money.

Anyone who further missed the point, clearly didn’t see the whacking great atomic symbol, smack bang at the center of the piece. But then, I daresay nuclear proliferation in the hands of a madman who loves to push buttons, barely warrants a  semblance of grey matter either.
The worm coiling from the cuff, is just a further token of dehumanization, as we slither back toward the primal dirt from whence we came.

So perhaps its biblical after all.

Pastures new

Here I am in my new studio digs, feeling like the cat got the catnip, because it’s indoors, higher ceilings, central air, located in the same building I eat and sleep in.

 Yes, part of me will miss the romance of the open air that was my trek to the little converted garage on the mountain, the occasional harvest mouse that would scutter along the rafters, even the sticky black widow spiders web that would dangle from the corners of old canvases. I could even handle the ball chilling winters. 
I shalln’t miss the longest hottest summer in living memory though, which along with the dust and smoke had rendered Planet Mercury as uninhabitable as-well, it’s namesake. 

Looking down are some of the pieces from the new series, Paradiso’s Fall, which I just happen to be at the halfway point of, so it’ll be interesting to see if the remainder will be influenced by the new workspace.

 It’ll certainly be less like camping.

Tales from the dead zone

It’s been several months since I last wrote, I know, but if posts have been thin on the ground of late, it’s because I’ve been pouring myself into the work at hand.

That, plus its all too easy to feel like you are just adding to the noise right now, magnifying the human footprint marked ‘the landfill of opinion’. Better to stay in the dead zone.

Still, it’s alarmingly distressing out there-kiddies in cages. Concentration camps. An entire demographic of the populous falling over themselves with lick spittle piety to justify it. One wonders where the balance will tip, and how far over the edge.

The work by contrast has flourished, but is no less inspired by current events. It would be hard not to. What began contextually as possibly my farewell letter to the American empire, has become a surreal catalogue of the ill omens that have informed it.

This piece-as yet untitled-swirls with apocalyptic nods and winks. Personal and otherwise. Broadly, there are the American Killing fields of Vietnam. The little napalm girl-Kim Phuc in that eerie messianic pose. Hiroshima and Nagasaki respectively.

Quite a lot of unsavory raw meat to swallow, and not the kind of sandwich one feels compelled to share.

"Bosch Brain Freeze" - Oil on canvas-11" x 14"

It’s not all been dark introspection, took a breather and knocked out a fun little Bosch homage for La Bodega’s recent Spirit Animal show.

Because the old Flemish master is always a good party trick to conjure at the end times.

Anyway, more announcements to follow soon, all being well.

Mother Deer.

You can’t really tell yet, but that’s Elen I’m painting, the lost pagan horned goddess of British folklore.
She’s Mama deer, spiritual consort, Shamanic pathfinder of ley lines and a divine fertility being.

That’s quite a bad ass resume, except to say that like most Pagan figures, it wasn’t enough for her Christian brethren, who gave her a historical make over and renamed her St Helena.

Still, her new turn as a latter day Lara Croft, seeker of relics such as the Holy Sepulcher and Christs Cross is fascinating on its own merit. Even if it meant desecrating the Temple of Venus in 333AD (Jesus in Hebrew for anyone who wondered) and relinquishing her female empowerment card, by re-erecting what John Allegro in his book ‘The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross’ called a ‘Phallic Symbol of ecstatic fertility and Resurrection’.

Its as close to Eve as I’ll get in my series about fallen Eden I suppose.

Having seen both ‘Annihilation’ and ‘Mother’ recently, it struck me that perhaps I’m plundering similar furrow as far as the cultural zeitgeist is concerned. Mankind being the great corrupter and pathogen in the garden and all that. Mother nature made barren by eschatology.  Although I didn’t really like either movie to be honest, and I suspect ‘Mother’ to be more of that directors bitter sentiments on being an ‘artiste’ in Hollywood.

Go tell it to Kubrick, Darren.

If my series, Purgatorium, ended with a piece featuring John Locke pointing the way  like a wise old owl, then Paradiso’s Fall is imbued with the myth of America as his Tabula Rasa.

One of the phrases from Miltons Paradise lost that jumped out at me as a foundation for the series was ‘The mind in it’s own place..can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”

So much of our personal Eden’s will always be tainted by expectation.

It’s something to bare in mind as I’m bearing fruit.

Climbing trees.

This was a week ago, so I’m further along. Detailing, nitpicking, slowly losing my mind  seeing the wood for all the trees, or at least its many branches. I never imagined that the landscape would be something I’d busy myself with, but on daily walks with the little dog now, I find myself lost in the threadbare treeline and crooked manzanita’s, not on the internal dialogue. I suppose it could be that thing Larkin said about his own fascination with trees…’Is it that they are born again, and we grow old?”

Still ten more to go before showtime in a year, got myself a portable easel courtesy of my wife in the meantime. Weather and knees permitting and as a sort of compliment to the series, I’m going to be knocking out some of the little landscape study’s to sell in the interim.

Perhaps I’ll follow in the footsteps of my more famous namesake after all.

If only I could find a money tree.