Paradiso’s Fall First Trailer

Here’s something really cool-an epic teaser for the main event, something to whet the appetite.

Which is why I am delighted and honored by the stellar promotional video, that Dark Art Emporium has put together for my forthcoming show.

Concise, informative, beautifully edited, cuts to heart of my intentions, and best of all, I only appear in it handful of time over the four or so minutes.
But check out the art for Paradiso’s Fall, which I am immensely proud of.

A big thank you to both curators Jeremy Schott and Jeremy Cross.

Paleozoic periods

 "And my essays lying scattered on the floor
Fulfil their needs just by being there"

David Bowie-Conversation Piece

That's it, the final flourish-my daubed initials alongside a scuttering trilobite. A little primordial arachnomorph, peering out from the corner of a bygone time. 

An apt note to end the series on then. 

He's also a call back to all of those gorgeously illustrated dinosaur books I had as a child, a relic from my own Paleozoic period if you will. Long gone to some netherland, dusty token corner of the internet, which I inevitably pored over before I began the series. 

Actually, if you look at my piece 'Space Enough Have I, to Lie in Such a Prison" from my last series-Purgatorium-you can see a little Archaeopteryx and Eohippus, in what is ultimately a thread between the two collections.

Speaking of seminal beginnings, I finally caught the excellent Bowie documentary-'Finding Fame'. 
It reminded me that in an older blog post (which is hard to believe is almost a decade ago now) I'd wondered" Pre Ziggy...What spurred that self belief?" 

What struck me, was for all of David Jones's early missteps,through excruciating novelty Gnome records and mime, were the seeds of sustained, exploratory fearlessness he  possessed of creative self discovery and illumination.For him, what started as a vehicle for some sort of notoriety, manifested into creating for the spirit of the mere act of creating itself, as a way of destroying the self..

Coming at the tail end of my own series, about mans compulsive nature for creation and destruction, it's a sentiment I both adhere and relate to. 

Certainly, his passing in 2016 and his final album has informed this entire body of work.

Just over a fortnight to go before the unveiling, and all the final preparation still ahead of me. 

In every sense.


 

Origin of Origin

Back to where it all started, the final piece of the series, or 'The Origins of Life' to give it, it's full title. This one goes all the way back to November 2016, which I mothballed when I began formulating plans for Paradiso's Fall. I hadn't intended it to be part of this series until I pulled it out again to actually paint over, and realized it totally followed the arc of the collection. I guess given the month and year it was manifested in should have been a clue.

I've retooled it somewhat, but when it's finished, I want it to sit with 'The Origin of Death' and 'Origins of a Black Hole' to form a part of a triptych-a terrible trinity if you will. 

In between, I've been ladling on the varnish which for me is the absolute worst part of the process. One cannot describe enough, the full existential horror of pouring thick wads of syrup on something you have meticulously worked on, only to discover what amounts to a thicket of cat dander,like a transporter bay of Tribble's appearing in the atmosphere. My cat Ronin, cares not a jot.
At any rate,I have resolved that my next series shall be completed in a Dexter styled kill room.

It's hard to believe I'm already anticipating that far.

Paradiso Poster

Coming soon, to a select gallery in Long Beach…


“Following directly on from my previous series (‘Pergatorium’), “Paradiso’s Fall” utilizes elements from Milton’s classic work, and the corruption of Eden as a mythological set piece for my own autumn of years, the fall of man, and the prevailing dark age we live in. Through this series of paintings that are ill omens to the end times, the work is a meditation on mans appetite for self destruction, against the dichotomy of the ‘artist’s’ creative predisposition to deconstruct.”

-David Van Gough

“The thing I most love about David Van Goughs work is his use of symbols. Each paintings is a smorgasbord of images and all of them have a highly intentional and elegant part to play in the story he is telling. From the twisted, Bosch like creatures to the weather in the sky beyond. It all relates, like a fantastic jigsaw puzzle that has no corners, we are left with the joyful duty of finding how each defines the next until the underlying meaning, or at least how we perceive it, finds its way into view. But what keeps us digging is the skill with which each piece of that puzzle is created. The man can paint.”

– Jeremy Cross
Assistant Director – The Dark Art Emporium

And I mean how effing cool is the poster?

The piece he’s chosen to promote the series is called ‘Origins of a Black Hole”, and the ex designer in me, must admit to gritting my teeth through some designs submitted for past shows I’ve been involved with.
Lest we forget the aesthetic horrors of the now defunct gallery that promoted my show using brush script.
It’s to the Assistant Director Jeremy Cross‘s credit however, that he’s taken one of my pieces and complimented it perfectly. Thank you Jeremy.

Jeremy himself is a wonderful outlier artist by the way, I implore you to check out his darkly idiosyncratic works.
http://jeremycross.bigcartel.com/

Title Series

It's a month away until showtime.

Even the icy tundra of the early morning studio, can't deter me from the last haul, as I defrost, warming my hands by the space heater, and with bottomless mugs of tea . 

As the final piece nestles on the easel, the juggling frenzy of photographing the pieces and varnishing them before framing extends the working day, long into the evening. 

It's afforded me the distance of looking over the entire collection, without that constant niggling feeling that I want to tickle a corner or start over. 

I can tell you that the material comprises what I believe to be some of my most powerful, unsettling and uncompromising work to date. Truly, serpentine anima for the dark period it's been created in.

I'm very happy and proud of the whole series.

Whilst I can't reveal the works yet, the titles at least should give you some semblance of what to expect. As the Tempest was to Purgatorium, some of the titles for Paradiso's Fall are taken from passages of Milton's Paradise Lost. Others were directed from specific content. Here then-in the order I hope to exhibit them-are the titles.

1 What's Dark Within, Illuminate.

2 Where Death and Nature Breeds

3 The Voyage of Elen

4 The Death Eaters

5 The Origins of Life

6 The Origins of Death

7 Origins of a Black Hole

8 Ages of Hopeless End

9 For Want of Other Prey

Other possible titles were 'To Put it Mildly', 'Long and Prayerful Consideration' 'Chaos Judge the Strife' and 'Sacrament of the White Knights', so make of those what you will.
 

Also uncompromising, was Tomi Ungerer, who I read with real sadness, passed away recently. As I wrote in a previous post from 2009, upon first seeing Tomi's work in his book-Testament-at Liverpool's library in the 1980's had a profound effect on me. "his work peels back the thinly veiled skin to reveal the stark bone of societies distemper beneath."

And whilst some would say that 87 years of age is a good innings, it seems pretty unfair that he's gone, given a certain former 'reality' TV host still breathes to spread misery and woe, but then I guess as with Newtons third law, 'everything has an equal and opposite reaction'

I highly recommend 'Far out isn't far enough' if you haven't seen it-I think it was on Netflix, but beg, borrow or steal a copy.

Penultimate Peril

“Richard Nixon Back Again”

Billy Joel, We Didn’t Start the Fire.

The working title for this one might end up being “The Artifice of Fraud”,”Cognitive Dissidence”, “Origins of a Black Hole” or something entirely different. Given these time’s it was created in, there shouldn’t be much of a symbolic leap over what, or rather “whom” it’s about.

That it’s the penultimate piece to a series about ill omens and man’s predisposition toward self annihilation, may have fresh and foreboding significance, given the US and the former Soviet Unions recent withdrawal from the nuclear arms treaty.

If we survive the years ahead, at the very least the best historical legacy we could look forward to, may be the flourishing of art that reflects the period we live in.

For instance, the atrocities of Spain's bloody war produced Goya's Distasters of War,  the horrors of Otto Dix's nightmarish hellscapes, sprung from the decay of first WW trenches, Philip Guston's eviscerating scrawls showcased the Nixon years, and Peter Howson's sprawling canvases rose from the stark degradation and inhumanity of Bosnia's war.

If there is one thing safe to assume, it’s that we live in fertile times for works of such scope.

Having just viewed Velvet Buzzsaw on Netflix, I'm heartened by the fact that for all the droll and ugly depiction of artifice and hollow pretension in the Contemporary Art World, at least Hollywood seems in on the secret that Dark figurative painting, is the most authentic art of substance.

Albeit if the artist was mad, unknown and dead.

Still...

One more to go before showtime, long nights of back breaking daubing and blind panic before showtime. 


While you wait to see the new stuff, here's some old stuff-a blast from the past when I was unknown, mad at the world and may as well have been dead. Encompassing the decade 1987 to 1997, for what were my wilderness years, I've uploaded a gallery of curio's for those who might be curious . 

The Liar | Mixed media on canvas panel | 11" x 18" (1997)

Whilst I wish I could include the long since lost Dalinian neurotic etchings of '84, or the following summer painting Eric Fischl style nudes,  what remains are I think, my first embryonic stumbling's through the same spiritual dark matter that has consumed my work for my entire artistic life. 


Click the link below to see more:


1987-1997