Head Candy-'The Heat is On'Preview of David Van Goughs Hive show

There's nothing so turgid as discussing the weather, but it thundered here today, ending a five day heatwave that at its peak was 112 degrees.Ironically, it spelled the culmination of fevered activity that has been my studio, for the two shows that have been a year in the making.

Yesterday we hung the show at the Hive, thematically and technically I am beyond delighted with the display, and it was noted by the curator that it's one of the strongest shows he has exhibited.

I've given my all to these shows, and I wish I could afford to take stock for a while, and work on my book.
However basking and enjoying the fruits of my labors isn't an option, the budget for the shows has left us pretty cash poor, and I'm hoping that the returns from the events bring us back from the brink.

Notes from an Easel-Three new paintings summary by David Van Gough

'Memories Decay'
16" x 20"
Oil on Canvas

When I began this piece, I thought it was to be a play on possession, however, as it evolved I realised that in fact it was a rumination on memories of the dead, and how over time the memory itself erodes and decay's, so one is left with disparate fragments and traces of reality.

'Blue Triumvirate'
16" x 20" Oil on Canvas
I wanted to revisit this piece with the emphasis that it would express an emotional transition, as opposed to just it's initial metaphorical concept. The sense is that there has been a shift in the way I feel about things-more of a somber melancholy, and dare I say (almost) an acceptance in the softened cool hues, as opposed to the harsh, stark angularity of bleached bone.


'Mentors Shadow'
16" x 20"
Oil on Canvas


In the melting forms of liquified ridges and hollow cavities, is the Triumvirate biomorphing into an enigmatic, formless mass, constantly in flux and trying to reformulate itself. Like a lava flow, it is a paradox of fire and water, like the process of my own grief and the way I have accomodated it in my work. There is a great dichotomy that suggests a natural order or rites of passage to confronting ones own mortality after a bereavement, in that same sense this ghost would not exist otherwise.


All three pieces will be premiered at the Hive featured show this coming Saturday.

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. Blue Triumvirate.

The Blue Triumvirate is virtually complete. I prefer it over the other one, but then it wouldn't have been worth doing if I hadn't.

And I've been reprieved from Sunday's deadline-the delivery date now in fact is next week.

With ideas still burgeoning for the Hive show, I couldn't say if that's a good thing or not.

All told, I've been burning the candle at both ends as is. I have never really understood what that means but if to qualify means you look like Nick Nolte mugshot, then I'm pretty sure I am defined by it.

And I feel myself coming down with something-hardly surprising really.
Would I have it any other way? Not on your Nelly!!

Never understood that term either.

Notes from an Easel. Box Office

Spent a large body of the day preparing the body of work for the Alternative Cafe show.

It's the largest collection I've put together for a show thus far, and shipping it to the Moon would have been no less arduous.

So collection 1 is in transit, collection 2 is in transition, since I am still making additions.
Triumvirate reprise is going swimmingly,with the vague idea that I shall be painting two more Ghosts. With just three days to go before delivery, I must be out of my mind.

Is this the same with every artist I wonder?

And still, the coffers need filling, so I managed to knock this out for breakfast yesterday. Its a rather nice piece of Pop Surrealism, which uses some common religious motifs to denote the origin of evil.

Head Candy-Bill Bixby goes to Monterey

Took a few days out to throw a shindig for my wife's 30th.

I've never thrown a party before, less hosted one, and hadn't anticipated the mountain of organization involved one iota, less the whole yard looks like it might as well be on Mars factor.
All told, judging from the merry throng and the lateness of the hour, I believe it was a success.

So first day back at the Art thing, should have been a cinch, except I discovered that The Alternative Cafe gig isn't in LA, but Monterey.

I'm not kidding.

Geography, was never a strong point at school.

Some quick thinking and a swift rejig made the shipping option a lot less lofty (by over a hundred nicker), but I'm afraid that I've had to supplement the monster that is 'The Valley'.

Thematically it works much better for the cannon of 12 pieces for Alternative Cafe, but my intended vision for The Hive shall definitely miss 'Triumvirate'-the piece I traded it for.

To that end, I've started a reprise of that work, but with the difference that I am approaching it more as a somber lament, rather than with the stark rawness of its former incarnation.

Sunday is final delivery date.

I swear I am Bill Bixby from the show-The Magician, pulling all kinds of rabbits out of hats.

Here's not a rabbit, but my pinhead cat Ronin, magically appearing on my head.

Notes from an Easel-the Ghost of Medusa-new painting by David Van Gough

"the Ghost of Medusa"
Oil on Canvas
12" x 24"

The mornings are starting to cool, and a dense mist hangs over the wild palms.

I love this time of year.

I've been in a bit of a fog myself this past week, waking in the middle of a night in a frenzy, freaking about the last minute preps for the forthcoming exhibits, living on four hours a night, and beginning each day swirling palettes and consuming copious amounts of tea.

I shalln't truly find the sleep of the dead until the last stroke.

I suppose I'm a man possessed-off the charts and obsessively compulsively picking at the scab of everything I do.

There's some of that in this latest piece I suppose-'The Ghost of Medusa'-though truly its something I've been working towards for twenty years. There are half realized traces of it in drawings I did as far back as 85, it's eerie. Was it prescient or just self fulfilled prophesy? Who cares-I'm in love with the piece-it feels like the herald of a new direction. It's realisation was organic and as natural as breathing-if I must annotate though, it partly has its foundation in the quote from Jack London's novel-'The Mutiny of Elsinor'', which I discovered very recently. In it he says-

"...Man, awake, is compelled to seek a perpetual escape into Hope, Belief, Fable, Art, God, Socialism, Immortality, Alcohol, Love. From Medusa-Truth he makes an appeal to Mayan-Lie (illusion)"

For myself, those words encompass perfectly life's deflections from the shadows of the night.
Along with my continuing obsession with the cosmic resonance of the number three-(Medusa was part of a trinity of Gorgons), I should relate that my dead friend Martin had completed a drawing of Medusa before he died. It hadn't occurred to me until I was working on it. The arc continues.

I have perhaps two more pieces in me before delivery date-though something of a backtrack in the sense that they shall compliment the last gasp of the original Theothanatos series.

Onward and upwards.

Bring it.