Dali

Oil on canvas
9″ x 12″

Between prepping the canvas and sketching for the next piece, I knocked out another Alla Prima portrait in a couple of hours today.

Dali -in my opinion the greatest artist of the 20th century-has become so ubiquitous that the impact his surreal art had on me when I first encountered ‘The Death of Narcissus’ in a copy of Man, Myth and Magic in the 1970’s, seems almost neutered by its legacy into mono culture.

That mustache like an upturned curly bracket so synonymous, that the portrait didn’t resemble him, until the follicular finishing touch.

Still, the work remains utterly phenomenal and back then I was utterly obsessed, so I shan’t understate the influence he had on my own artistic quest.

In fact, I still read his wonderfully salacious ‘Unspeakable Confessions’ yearly, because the enigma of his work was made all the more profound by the fact that he was as mad as cheese.

Final Painting for the Purgatorium show

 

Although most of my friends on Facebook and the like will be acquainted with it by now, here it is for your viewing pleasure-"This thing of Darkness, I acknowledge mine"

What to tell you about it-well, not only is it the last piece I painted, but it's the final piece in the entire series. I had intended 'He who dies, pays all debts" (and I apologize for the long titles, but you know-go tell it to Shakespeare) but I really wanted the arc to end on a high note, as well as it be something which could include Joseph Locke, William Blake and my cat Ronin. 

With all that said, it's kind of a farewell to England, or the idea of England-a place that exists as an idea rather than tangible landmass. A topography of the mind, or at least its surrounding ocean if you will. 

It'll be hung along it's sisters and brothers throughout September at Bash Contemporary. 

Yeah, you know the drill. HERE

PURGATORIUM-FIRST PREVIEW

Here it is-11 of the projected 24 pieces for my show- Purgatorium - opening at Bash Contemporary September 5th-October 5th, Artist reception 6th 6pm - 9pm-all inquiries to info@bashcontemporary.com, (415) 926-8573 www.bashcontemporary.com

 Good Wombs Have Borne Bad Sons-oil on canvas
-48"x36" $3500

 What's Past is Prologue-oil on canvas-48"x36" $4000

 A Thousand Furlongs of Sea, For an Acre of Barren Land-oil on canvas-48"x36" $3500

 The Dark and Backwards Abysm of Time- oil on canvas-48"x36" $4000

 Brave New World-oil on canvas-48"x36" $3500

 Misery acquaints man with strange bedfellows-oil on canvas-48"x36" $4500

 So Lie There, My Art-oil on canvas-48"x36" $3000

Poor Worm, Thou Art Infected-oil on canvas-48"x36" $4000

 Night Kept Chained Below-oil on canvas-48"x36" $4500

Space Have I to Lie in Such a Prison-oil on canvas
-48"x36" $4000

He That Dies Pays All Debts-oil on canvas
-48"x36" $5000

Purgatorium

"Hell is Empty and all the Devils are here"
The Tempest-William Shakespeare

In his forty-fifth Year, David Van Gough embarked upon a series which would finally confront the daunting shadow cast by his most famous ancestor, and the inevitable connotations of that surname.

Adopting the characterization of Vincent Van Gogh as martyr– and recapitulating stanzas from Shakespeare's Tempest recast as themes of life's metaphorical exile – Purgatorium (Latin for “the place in between”) sets a chronological backdrop of re-imagined personal biography from the desolate mire of his Liverpudlian upbringing to imagined death and the shadowed here-after.

The series is Van Gough's manifestation of the artist-as-alchemist via an exorcism of our contemporary society that suppresses arcane secrets, the ancient craft, the magical depths. The result is an epic parable of traumatic realization and purification."

The House of the Future Show

Don't really know where to begin telling you about Saturdays show. I could tell you it was like PT Barnum on LSD.

Or that it was like the entire San Diego underground had converged on a house on a hill and held an end of the world party.

Or that I'd wandered down a weird rabbit hole, dream,vortex, but no...NO!!...none of that really cuts it.

Maybe it was that holographic Dali clock, warping time, but as trite as it sounds, at times if felt like being submerged in a bizarro dream.

One where I talked at length with legend Selwyn Lissack, the designer of Dali's clock,who had me on the floor with anecdotes about meetings with the surreal grandmaster.

Or one where I bumped into my wife's beautiful cousin Juju Namjai, and discovered that she was in fact this incredible, talented, sensual lead singer of a band called Orchestra Mustachio.

In fact, it was a night of old friends...

Except I wasn't dreaming, because I captured some choice shots before my camera died. I only wish I had more.

Me with two Legends Patty Rangel, Selwyn Lissack

Lovely Alisha, one of my buyers.

My gorgeous wife sitting on what we called the 70's porn couch, wearing a top she designed as a homage to the surreal expressionist masterpiece-Bride of Frankenstein.

The incomparable Juju with her band, wearing make up inspired by Dali's Mae West painting.

Some thank you's in order-Ian Ashley and her husband for hosting the extravaganza, Dennis Batt and everyone from San Diego Visual Arts Guild who organised the event, as always my extended friends and family who came out in support of my work and everyone who had such great things to say about my art.

Ghost Ships of Mars

I really like this small study I produced today-it could be the ethereal fragment from a half recalled dream, a didactic comment on Bin Laden's final resting place, a reconciliation of memories of my hometown or the illustrated cover from a proposed 1970's sci-fi novel, as yet unwritten-possibly by Heinlein.
It's ambiguous enough to say that it has no meaning other than the potential for every meaning, which is entirely what art should be I suppose- open to endless interpretation.

For shits and giggles I comped another cover, this time in the style of those pulp stalwarts-Pan books. Oh how I'd have loved to have been an artist in that lost Golden age before Photoshop and Getty images. Perhaps some budding Heinlein or Asimov out there feels thus inspired to write prose for the imagined jacket?