Flogging a dead horse

It’s winter on the mountain, so colder than a witches tit , as my fingers numb painting progeny from some region of Hades. I’m tempted to liken it all to Munch in his open-air studio, or Brueghel freezing his arse off painting Hunters in the snow, except the make shift home studio / garage seems less romantic, and for all its crappiness-the little space heater disqualifies me from truly suffering for my art.

Still, it’s brass monkeys.

This one actually started out as something I knocked up at a live painting thing at some bar several years back. It’s sat abandoned behind a bunch of other unfinished canvases ever since. And then November happened, so no better time to dust off one of the four horsemen in the face of impending apocalypse I suppose.

I’m juggling two other large-scale pieces right now, which means all this renewed fever of activity will keep me warm before actual hell or a nuclear winter is unleashed on earth.

Notes from an Easel-Part 63-Kiss of Death.

Found my second wind today, and spent the afternoon in the seclusion of my studio, working up a new skull piece. I've wanted to put the stark white of bone against a blood crimson background for a while-it has a Valentines chocolate box appeal I guess, so I'm calling it 'the Kiss of Death.'
However, three days in, and I've been neglecting my daily sketch, although preparations have been so frantic, I've barely been able to doodle on a post-it.Suffice to say that they shall be reinstated tomorrow.

Here is a picture of my cat Ronin then, looking like butter wouldn't melt in his maw. Would you believe that this is the same cat who terrorizes his sister Pepper, steals my brushes, walks on my wet canvases and laid a sloppy stank egg on my rug yesterday morning? Snow white demon from Hades on cocaine.


Speaking of lethal white powders, I am told that my hometown is currently in the grip of a suffocating blanket of ice, not felt since the bitter winter of 81.
Undeterred, my heavily pregnant daughter-Emma-, trekked an hour through the tundra to her art college to discover it closed before walking back. It alarmed me terribly when I found out, but that's the kind of tenacity and determination that little girl is made of-she reminds me so much of myself, and I am incredibly proud.

Tomorrow I ought to be able to complete the new piece, before the weekend and our next stop at the Hive in LA.

Notes from an Easel-Death of Winter new painting by David Gough

Title: 'The Death of Winter' (2009)
Size: 15" x 30"
Medium: Oil on canvas

Inspired in parts by a recent sabbatical to Big Bear,the cold dystopia of Cormac McCarthys 'The Road', and the result of listening to Brett Andersons 'Slow Attack' album continuously, it is a counterpoint to all those Kinkaid style depictions of cosy Christmas card scenes, and relates symbolically with the end of the solstice, the death cults relationship with seasonal transition, and the intangible feeling one gets of ones own mortality, looking across a frozen lake in the clutches of winter.

Notes from an Easel-57-Death of Winter

Despite the finality of my signatures flourish, I shalln't be able to tell if the piece is complete until it's dry. Diffusing the black point's to grey, really gives it a nice depth of middle ground. I'm pleased-its a rather delicious counterpoint to the candy-cane, force feeding of the seasons sentiments.

That said, I am not completely, curmudgeonly about the graces of Xmas, so to set the mood, here's something cooler than chilled eggnog- Bowie and Bing singing 'Peace on Earth, Little Drummer boy' back in the good old days of 77:

Notes from an Easel-Death of Winter work in progress part two by David Gough

There is something 1970's panoramic about this piece-my mind keeps projecting Hockney, Led Zeps 'Houses of the Holy' LP cover, and the backdrops of 'Watership Down'.

As a kid of that era, it's all too telling.

Despite the fact that the scene is from Californian vistas of Big Bear, there is something really parochially English about the work.

As a kid of that country, it's all too telling.

Another thing, as simplistic as the composition appears, distinguishing the indestinguishable has been a tremendous challenge-trees obscured by a blizzards guaze have meant rendering oil paint as thinly as a watercolorist-layering in light washes.

I'm getting there.

Notes from an easel-Death of Winter work in progress part one by David Gough

'If I don't write to empty my mind, I go mad.'

Lord Byron

Notes from an Easel 53-Death of Winter

Fridays are my only concession to the mundanity of the working week, which is only ever punctuated in the evenings by occasional ruminations at my easel. On other days, I still feel like I'm merely faking it, a Sunday afternoon hobbyist inauthentically posing as the real deal, because the drag of scratching for a living at every other time, leaves me with a clutch of hours, fighting total exhaustion late into the dying candle of the evening.Fridays I afford myself the afternoons,locked in my studio-five hours of uninterrupted contemplation of paint-its like a enema for the soul.
With, the wintery timbres of Brett Andersons latest offing, en loop in the distance, the paint flowed like alchemy-I'm loving the new piece so much, it touches the innately unpronounceable chasm of living with a knowledge that someday it will all end, the awe of the nature and the passage of time. I can't wait to finish it.

Notes from an Easel-Part 52-Death of Winter

Having laid down a light wash, and distinguished the details, I started to work in the background because I feel that as with the Valley piece, the geography for this piece,carries the same weight as the message. Previous deaths head pieces have been more informed by the concept, the background seeming something of an afterthought, although not entirely.

Its a process I'm learning to embrace more and more, I think for the longest time-perhaps too long, I've held a general mistrust of the real, believing that feeding entirely from the subconscious was the purest form of expressing-that to draw from life somehow diluted the idea. I still think that's the case-certainly with someone like Dali, the more technically he drew from the real, the less his work seemed informed by the surreal, but for me it feels like the work is becoming more cohesive and focused, evolving a germ of an idea into an entirely different animal. Its hugely exciting, and I've even taken to carrying a sketchbook everywhere and sketching, which always felt like somehow an attempt to elevate the mundane, but its something I am enjoying again.

Notes from an Easel part 51-Death of Winter

the smaller study for this piece has gone through something of an evolution, certainly inspired by our weekend sabbatical in Big Bear, and having seen 'The Road' the other night. Despite the minimalism of this scratchy pencil study, putting flesh on those bones perse, is a hugely exciting prospect for me, encompassing everything I've longed to express about the bleak disquiet of winter, peering into murky icy waters seeing your breath dissipate in the cold air, and feeling the goosebumps through your soul.