Fait Accomplais

“Christianity is a myth that has been literalised.”
Timothy Freke

Here I am at the opening act for what will be the grand guignol, for my very own book of Revelations.

The first of the last,the meanest story ever had then. Infernal, the Denouement.

For any end, there has to be an origin story, and with that in mind, I suppose it was inevitable that my work would arrive back at the beginning.  I’m thinking of course of Theothantos, my artistic fumbling’s through the quagmire of dogma and mortality. Dealing with those questions back then, carried a lot of heft. With the burden of weighing up the ultimate existential odyssey, I found it easier to reduce the work to the abstract crevices of a skull.

As Henry Miller once pronounced when talking about Tropic of Capricorn, he should have waited until the end of his career to do what he’d tried at the beginning.

Perhaps a decade on, none the wiser, over fifty and certainly more world weary, I feel more able to put flesh on those bones.

And alongside Eliots The Wasteland- I’ve been drawing on some old stalwarts for spiritual encouragement. Goya’s black paintings, Picasso’s later years, Otto Dix’s war etchings, Grunewalds Corpus Christi, Liverpool urban decay from the 70’s.  

Perhaps it’s some sort of fait accomplais, but I want the series to feel like it’s been produced from the vantage point of an artist, journaling the end of days.

I wish I could say it feels like a stretch.

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.

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.