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?

David Gough inspirations-day four : British TV Titles in the Seventies

Day four of five things that influenced me as a kid

Perhaps it was the result of some residual psychedelic Acid trip from the Sixties at Broadcasting house's Art department, but there seemed to be something positively unsettling about some British TV in the Seventies.

Whatever it was, the shows titles alone seemed designed in some Orwellian lab, to imprint dark nightmarish visions on an impressionable young cerebellum. Certainly for this artist, they colored an already fevered imagination.

Take 'The Tomorrow People', billed as a children's Television show about superbrained adolescents, no doubt some of the plots would have gone completely over my head even now, But the title sequence still puts the fear of dark Gods into me.



U.F.O came from the same stable as Thunderbirds, except as opposed to puppets it was Aliens that looked in the throws of epilepsy, Ed Stryker and the delicious Gabrielle Drake looking like a throwback to 2001. The end sequence can still give me cold sweats.



Armchair Thriller WAS on usually after Ovaltine and as I was about to be ordered up the stairs, but try falling into a wistful slumber with this sequence resonating in your skull.

Something for the Weekend-Golden Years?

We ought to be in the first throws of Autumn, except it feels like we are in the clutches of an Indian summer.

However,I carry the timbres of fall regardless of the season.

The new Ghost is called Mentors Shadow-informed definitely by the idea of my 'holy' Triumvirate piece unraveling to reveal the vivacious spirit instilled by friends passing. I certainly would'nt be as passionate about the notion of legacy, were it not for realising the finiteness of a mortal life.

That is the cruel irony of what I do I imagine.

Notes from an Easel-Nocturnally Yours

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.

Head Candy-whirlygig, mindgasm, oblivion

'Amazing how grimly we hold on to our misery, the energy we burn fueling our anger. Amazing how one moment, we can be snarling like a beast, then a few moments later, forgetting what or why. Not hours of this, or days, or months, or years of this... But decades. Lifetimes completely used up, given over to the pettiest rancor and hatred. Finally, there is nothing here for death to take away'

Charles Bukowski
So, my 43rd year unravels before me.

Obviously I'm handling it all very well.
I daresay as a bastard son (as well as just being an old bastard) of that gen X thing and a grubby child of the seventies, the disappointment of the noughtie's is profound. How could it not be-caterwauling through the punk revolution of the mid to late 70's, blowing the wind through crusty old world creakiness, we bought into the lie of anticipating a future that would be beyond a Fritz Lang wet dreamtopia. Our prophets where Asimov,Arthur C Clarke and we were the Tomorrow People.
Growing old wouldn't be an option, as with Logans Run, in the future one could look forward to being collectively assembled on your 30th Birthday, and vaporised in some final whirlygig, mindgasm oblivion. But what a ride to get there, transporter beams in every apartment where you could materialise Jenny Agutter in a sparkly silk pashmina like the most delicious slice of takeout pizza-fuck chatroulette style.
Where you could get away from it all with holidays on the moon, whilst served martian cocktails by Gabrielle Drake, knocking off a few photons at extraterrestrials along the way.

And I was going to be the greatest artist of the 21st century-a critically acclaimed rockstar dauber, living like emperor Caligula, whose art would be poured over by the masses in galleries honored in my name and in the pages of 2000ad.

What a ridiculous naive and foolish child I was, sinking as I am now, on the arse end of middle age under the weight of my own disappointment.

Tosser

Still, there are graces and favours-I didn't die in my 30s, not from whirlygig, mindgasm,oblivion or the more likely liver disease, which if you knew me back when, is nothing short of a miracle.
I didn't make it to the moon, but I did make it-to America, which if you knew where I started is like reaching that far.

I still have my own hair and teeth,and more importantly the love and respect of my kids and Lani,who is still amazingly by my side which makes me the luckiest shit kicker this side of Toxteth.

Heres that other prophet of my time, lamenting the end of a space age dream, in what still is for me, the greatest music video ever.