Despite best efforts, Rise cannot rise to the occasion until it dries. I think it's the new organic turps I've been using, it's like a drying retardant, which would be fine except the snails pace makes it feel like it's still 2011.
Since reading about that time Frazetta lost the ability to paint because of the cheap turps he was using, I've been weary. Toxins be damned however, regardless of my studio's lousy ventilation and it being 80 degrees I am going to have to fall back on the hallucinogenic stuff for the time being.
In the interim, I'm working on a self portrait of sorts, which shall be part of the ongoing assimilation (working title) series. It's my epic project for this coming year, punctuated with occasional diversions into the American Madonna (another working title) sidearm.
Suffice to say, the first post of my sister blog is finally up, which are my working notes and research which accompany said series. So without further ado...
Title: Nocturne
Medium: Oil On Board
Size: 11" x 14"
The vampire hangs like some distant horror in the psychological recesses of our imagination, so for me it was all about a beast borne of something primeval in a dank cavern,deadly and certainly female.
I wanted to produce something that was a homage to the kind of late 70's British horror you'd see on pulp novels,film posters and comics, of a kind that doesn't really exist anymore, which is a terrible shame. Time permitting I'd love to do a graphic cover mock up.
It was also painted in the same week as Frazetta's passing, so I was certainly mindful of that.
I like that depending on your preference, you can look at it from upside down, or right way up, which itself was a sort of play on the title. I've submitted it for inclusion in a special vampire themed art book, so as soon as word comes that its been accepted, I'll confirm it here.
Its certainly a diversion on the more avant garde themes I've been pursuing for gallery fare of late, but I have to keep an eye on some kind of commercial market in the hopes that commissions for illustrations are more forthcoming, at least between sales and showings.
Frank Frazetta-February 9, 1928 – May 10, 2010
As a kid, there were two artists I wanted to be when I grew up. One was John Bolton, the other was Frank Frazetta.
I'll never forget the thrill of first seeing the cover of Creepy, on a newsagents shelf in Liverpool-the image of a sword wielding, frenzied warrior battling wierd bat demons, scored itself immediately to my little cerebellum,and beheld everything my adolescent imagination comprised up until that point, in one beautifully rendered image. It had nothing to do with my surroundings, and everything to do with some internally, amplified fantasy world.
Over the years, there were so many more covers to discover- savage, hellish, beasts, barbarians with axes glistening with blood,sultry buxom vixens writhing at there bootstraps-each one an iconic image, always a technicolor candy wrapper to the monographics within.
Sadly,in light of the post Star Wars blitz, Frazetta's work seemed a tad old fashioned-a relic of a bygone age, sword and sorcery shtick that carried the stigma of overgrown boys still living with there Mums and Dads.
And yet, I see his influence is everywhere, from the art of Bisley to Brom, to the Teutonic digital renderings of a World of Warcraft module, his legacy cuts a swathe through the driveling digital posturing of his imitators, because technically, he was a master.
In this era of p.c proselytizing , its hard to imagine a world where images of inflated sex kittens bent provocatively before a squirming serpent barely raised an eyebrow, let alone emblazoned the cover of a boys comicbook, but his work represented such a time of unpretension and unselfconscious.
And whilst he has long since been embraced as a seer, in the record of a certain 'art history', respect is overdue.
