Look What The Cat Dragged In.

 8"x11"
Oil on wood panel

Since I've been all consumed by the new series, I hadn't really planned to be in anymore shows until unveiling Infernal next year. 

That was until I was asked by my friend-fellow artist Stephanie Inagaki, to contribute something for an upcoming fundraiser for Luxe Paws, an initiative to help the homeless cat situation in LA.    

Also, my moggie Ronin-the Prince of Purrsia, would never have forgiven me.

Ronin pleading to enter the studio

As DaVinci once noted, “the smallest feline is a masterpiece”, and having already featured  my cat  in the piece –“This Thing of Darkness, I Acknowledge Mine” I opted instead to paint this – salvaged from an old ink sketch, which up until now I’d adopted occasionally as a sort of working logo.

I suppose it could be emblematic of the artists dark flightiness, or at least his sky fall which I’m calling “Look What the Cat Dragged In”. Make of the title what you will.

It’ll be showcased virtually at Copro Gallery on June 6th anyway, with a portion of the proceeds in aid of  LA’s forsaken felines. More details as I have them.

As no small aside, I had the distinct honor of including Stephanie’s work when I curated my Tales from the Darkside show in 2018, so go check out her extraordinarily beautiful, and ethereal work for yourself.

Stephanie Inagaki

Stephanie Inagaki “Anamnesis” (2018) drawing 6.5” x 8.5”

Stillborne

“Dragging their Jesus hair.
Did I escape, I wonder?
My mind winds to you
Old barnacled umbilicus, Atlantic cable,
Keeping itself, it seems, in a state of miraculous repair.”

Medusa-Sylvia Plath

24′ x 36″
Oil on canvas

I’ve painted Medusa before, or at least her ghost, which was if memory serves, prompted by reading some Jack London.

This one-partially inspired by Plath’s gorgeous poem about her mother-also supposes what might have happened had the Gorgon queen avoided being dispatched by Perseus’s sword, and gone on to conceive Poseidon’s progeny.

Yes I know, she has a head of eels instead of snakes, but it felt rather more in keeping with Athena’s wrathful spite mocking the mariner God, as well as a nice chance to continue a symbolic trope I started with Origins of a Black Hole.

I’ll be showing the piece at Copro gallery, for Chet Zar’s first Dark Art Society Group Show this Saturday through October.

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.

The next thing

“I will show you fear in a handful of dust”
T S Eliot. The Wasteland

So here you have it, this is me signing on for more of the same madness for what will be the forseeable two years. No rest for the wicked or maybe even the witless -who can say. Infernal, the Denouement- the final in a three part series, that started with Purgatorium in 2012.

As with the last two series, I’ll be using a literary springboard to jump start my visual ideas, this time in no less a monumental work than T.S.Eliot’s”The Wasteland”. That’s quite heavy stock for the stew right there.

Given that the opening lines begin “April is the cruellest month, breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land”, should give one an inkling of where I’m coming from-this being April and all.
No set date yet, but Infernal will open in 2021 at The Dark Art Emporium.
The end is nigh.

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

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/

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.

Seeing the light

Tales from the Darkside at Labodega. October 13 2018.

Some said that the grim pall of clouds that had gathered over San Diego, seemed apropos to the theme of the show. But if the summoning of stormy skies was as an ill omen to dissuade hordes of eager visitors, it hadn’t worked on that particular night.

And if there was a breeze detected, it was likely a result of my audible sighs of relief. Why…? Because my first co curated showcase, featuring over fifty contemporary dark artists – Tales from the Darkside at  LaBodega gallery was finally here.

It’s long been a given, that any visible art scene on the west coast, pales by degrees south of the I5. Having lived in San Diego for over a decade, I’ve certainly found that to be the case. But this night was different, it felt like the chance to dissolve the barriers, level playing fields and overcome the inequality that exists in a gallery system so riven with wrong headed prejudice towards the genre, but also one where an exclusion zone exists for anyone who isn’t a darling of the LA art scene. On October 13, established painters shared walls alongside bright, fledgling artists, alongside artists who are veterans and never really ever get a fair crack at the whip. All a collective,all and unstoppable force toward a common cause-dark art, because in times such as these, culture can be both a black mirror and a catharsis.
And if I’m want to wax lyrical and pile on superlatives, it’s because I’m still heady from the experience, as utterly draining and exhausting as it was, because make no mistake, being on the other side of the easel for a change is all encompassing. Small change when one considers the stellar retinue of artists and the work they produced.

My Indebted gratitude then to them all, to the folks and friends who attended the event, and most of all to my brother and sister, Chris Zertuche and Soni Lopez Chavez, for giving me the opportunity to host an event at such a remarkable gallery.

For purchase details, please contact Chris at labodegagallerysd@gmail.com

You can see a preview and photos from the show from the following links:

Tales from the Darkside preview

LaBodega official photos

Poster Art by Martin Woodhead-“Harbinger”

Sandy Yagi
“Hatching Death #1”
Oil on panel | 12×16″

Paul Nebarra
“The Forsaken”
Oil on canvas| 9″ x 11″

Jeff Christensen-
“Away, the ghost”
Oil on panel |11″ x 14″

Brooke Weston
“Vermillion Temple”
Taxidermy Deer/mixed media

Nannette Cherry
“Anamnesis (After Jozeph Simmler)”
oil on board | 12” x 12”

Splendor Solis

A reproduction of my piece “Space enough have I, to lie in such a prison” was recently included at ‘The Studio and Gallery’ exhibit ‘Splendor Solis, which is based on an alchemist grimoire of the same name from 1532.

My piece was a kind of riff on one of its plates, having first saw it in the magazine Man, Myth and Magic back in the 70’s-the golum figure stepping from the mud into the welcoming arms of the princess. The princess of course in my version, being my wife Lani as the Miranda figure to my Ferdinand.

Including among others, are the exquisite works of Laurie Lipton, and I’m honored to be included, as it looks like a tremendous exhibit. Its also notable because its my first showing in beautiful Scotland, and I’m hoping it promises to be my first of more exhibits in the UK.

You can see full details of the show from the following website:

The Studio and Gallery 

Show runs until the 24th February.

Paradiso's Fall

Though it may seem a little premature, best laid plans being what they are, I thought I would let you all know where a majority of my focus is going to be for the next fourteen months.

Following on from 2014’s show Purgatorium -I am honored to announce that  Paradiso’s Fall, will be debuting at The Dark Art Emporium in Long Beach, March 2019.

Though it may seem a ways off, experience has shown me that if time waits for no one, then it accelerates at light speed in the studio.

Over time, I’ll be posting works in progress, possibly even video peaks throughout the next twelve months, so I hope you’ll continue to follow me as I take another excursion down the rarebit hole.

As always the support and encouragement you provide sustains me like a manna, so my indelible thanks.

Conjoined 7

So on the day millions of women from around the world took to the streets against the new dark ages and muddy California Skys cascaded a tumult in accord, a little corner of Bergamont station was marking these times of dark herald, with Chet Zars Conjoined 7.

I could tell you of phantoms and hellions from every corner of the underworld, of mystical dervish shadows from  Hades bubbling craters, but it would be better if you saw it for yourself. After all, Darkness should be the visual anecdote of storytellers, not the reality manifested in halls of power.

Thank you to Gary and Chet, my fellow artists and everyone who braved traffic and downpour , the show is on display through February 11th.

Leviathan

Oil on canvas-42″ x 80″

“And because the constitution of a mans Body, is in continuall mutation; it is impossible that all the same things should alwayes cause in him the same Appetites, and aversions; much lesse can all men consent, in the Desire of almost any one and the same Object.
Good Evill”

Thomas Hobbes-Leviathan

Or the great metaphysical war between Hitler and Van Gogh, two historical figures parallel in the singularity of their ambitions, both failed artists within their lifetime,  yet so divided in that failures resolution.  Be it Ego or Id, creator or destructor, the paradox of dualism is manifest.

I realise I’m putting Descartes before the horse here.

I suppose they represent Post-contemporary paragons of the underdog, framing the entire 20th century and beyond. certainly when thinking of Van Gogh as the Godfather of Modern Art, there is the notion that there is some nobility in failure, when the truth so often comes at a cost whether the destruction that manifests is internal or as in Hitler’s case external.  I have to say, a lot of my thinking was informed by reading Artaud’s “Van Gogh: The man suicided by society” Particularly the haunting lines:

“Nobody ever wrote or painted, sculpted, modeled, built, invented, for another reason than to exit from hell. Each paint brush touch/strike (coup de pinceau) on the canvas is worst than an event.”

And yet Adolf had the presence of twisted mind to obliterated that “self-event” by creating Hell on Earth.

Lennon (the fuhrer’s antithesis) said it best when he confessed: “part of me suspects I am a loser, the other part God almighty.”

As I said previously here, it’s taken the best part of five years to bring it to some realisation but given that I completed it a week before the inauguration, the theme is eerily resonant-conjoined twins of diametrically opposed worldview, battling as Babylon falls like a sandcastle, whilst the architect King Nimrod (also an allusion to that other Nimrod totem of destruction) self-combusts in his zealous appetite to reorder the universe.

Having just watched Adam Curtis’s Hypernormalisation and read a recent interview where he perhaps wrongly charges the art world with some of the responsibility for the post-truth, Brexit / Trump outcome, it behooves me to wonder how we as artists can best characterize what we do, given the events and influences that inform us.

The painting will be on show alongside other artists works for Chet Zars Conjoined 7 show at Copro Gallery from January 21st.

Conjoined 7 at Copro

In which a selection of dark, underworld beasts, demonic progeny, and feral fiends shall assemble before a hypnotized throng. No I’m not talking about the inauguration, but Chet Zar’s annual Conjoined show at Copro gallery in L.A of which I shall be honorably participating.

The show opens on the 21’st January, and since at the time of writing, I am still putting the final touches to my largest piece to date, I better get my skates on.

Copronasan Gallery

Bergamot Arts Complex,
2525 Michigan Ave T5,
Santa Monica, CA 90404

Art and Cake Review

“In Van Gough’s vision, the devil is not in the details but in the distractions”

There’s a rather grand review of the recent Dark Realism/ Dark surrealism show at Gregorio Escalante gallery, up on Art and Cake LA.  I’m very grateful to the reviewer for their very astute and intuitive summation of ‘The Devil’-my piece in the show. You can read the full article from the link HERE.

The show is open until the 23rd of this month, so if you are in the area, please take a break from the shopping deluge of tinsel and tat, and soak up something that is more Satan’s grotto than the white bearded fella.

Dark Realism/Dark Surrealism Opening

So two weekends, Gregorio Escalante gallery, an artistic pantheon presenting the absolute pinnacle of dark Art. I mean what more can you ask for? My gracious thanks and gratitude to Greg Escalante, Chet Zar, Myron Conan Dyal and all the other incredible artists I shared walls with.

Here are some more stellar shots from the show- HERE

Show runs through December 23rd.

All the Devils are here.

36″ x 48″

Oil on canvas

Painted this, one-month last year.

Here’s the obligatory wank I wrote at the time:

“If the inherent meanings attributed with the up-right turn of the Devil tarot, are those of bondage, addiction, materialism, sexuality then how do these external forces translate in a contemporary sense?

With this piece, I wanted to take a traditional, almost secular avatar and revise it to a set of recognizable boundary’s in a culturally and politically relevant sense.

So I used the moment a first term president, stood on the literal flagship,representing an iconographic and establishment figure head-U.S.S Lincoln-to pronounce “Mission Accomplished”
What was accomplished exactly?
Was it a pronouncement to something far more sinister, made as it was on May 1st- or May day- a sacred Beltane date in the Illuminati calendar and also coincidentally, the same date of the Gulf oil spill , the death of Bin Laden, and a decade to the day that I completed this painting.

History has catalogued the subsequent fallout and the measure of swaggering, corporate, militarized, imperial arrogance of that speech far more adroitly than I ever can in paint, but in regards to the framework of the Tarot and its meaning, how do we navigate these murky waters to understand our own complicity to inevitable destruction, and the Cthulu-like tendrils that tumult and take root beneath the surface?

We do so because we are beholden to established power structures, to our acquisitions, our narcissism, to the illusionary deception of fear through the media, the physical bondage of materialism, to superficial totems, to our endless distractions, our disconnection of each other through a wifi connection, our addiction to fossil fuels for the plundering of our Online Articles.

Who are the real Devils then?  Are we the Luciferian aspect-the idolators that impose a hell of our own making upon Earth? And do we have it within our power to break the bonds of enslavement?
Or do we leave  the chance to the turn of a card?”

It’s never seemed more prevalent.

It’s also going to be on display at Gregorio Escalante’s gallery for Chet Zar’s Dark Realism / Dark Surrealism show from December 3rd.

I’ll post more details soon.

Cagliastro’s Feast:

Bad table manners at Djinner time

11″ x 14″ | Oil on canvas

For the uninitiated, Alessandro Cagliastro (also known as Joseph Balsamo) was a self styled occultist from the 1800’s who developed the disreputable distinction of being a charlatan or as Thomas Carlyle put it- ‘the Prince of Quacks’. His reputation wasn’t helped by his legacy as a forger par excellence, or by his connection to the Marie Antoinette Diamond Necklace affair. There’s something of case for him being a forebearer of Crowley’s however, a kind of 0.1 version and in fact, the great beast himself claimed Cagliastro to be one of his early manifestations.

He is also the author of the esoteric manuscript, The Most Holy Trinosophia, and was the founder of the lodge for the rite of Egyptian Freemasonry, which would prove to be curtains for the old magus when the inquisition put him on a charge of being one of its paternal members.

Here, I have him seated at an altar for the knights of Malta,surrounded by his props and uncorking a djinn- no doubt spinning tales of treasures in the distant Mount Pellegrino, to the duped cracked skull of Marano. Yet there’s an overshadowing menace bearing down on the com media dell’arte. Something which is always peering from beneath the surface, a primal fear of dark foreboding and ancient rite as represented by the seven headed dragon of Babylon.

It’s the notion of something ancient being played out over time, a return to the themes I touched on in the Man/son series, and it’s given me something of a flavor of what my next body of work will look like.

Cagliastro’s Feast will be on show during the Dark Matters show,at Bash Fine Art from this coming weekend through the 26th November.

What doesn’t kill you

0″ x 12″-Oil on panel

Given that this is my umpteenth work this year to feature some sort of death motif, ought to give you an indication of how I’m feeling about everything.

This one particularly is about the relentless (bastard) disease of cancer which I’ve tackled twice in my work before- the first time in ‘Mothers Milk’ and secondly as a homage to a friend in ‘Legacy-an artist general truth’

This one may seem a lot less po-faced, even pop surreal I suppose, but no less vitriolic, particularly when I recall the two family members, the friend, and the idol lost in its ruthless wake this past year.

The Big ‘C’ is like a plague one dare not say fully, for fear of  invoking a death sentence, it’s there a lurking, malevolent, silent, conspiracy of the bodies betrayal, a festering paranoia in every breath you inhale.

I wanted to evoke some of that in this piece which will be part of a special group show called simply ‘Cancer’ at Hyaena Gallery from October 1st through October 30th.