Silo

So the year that was January has come and gone then, and whilst the US moved one goosestep closer to what Orwell portended as a vision of the future, here on planet Mercury, we were making a fresh start. Laying down roots. Buying the farm or at least a two up two down.

Folly perhaps, given a time when one should seriously be considering migrating to a cave on Easter island. 

Still, this is me, knuckling down in the new studio space, which I've taken to nicknaming the "Silo", since it's comprised of a couple of old shipping containers, just a stones throw away from where I sleep.

The mornings are bone cold, and I daresay come the summer months, I shall feel like a boiled frog, so whilst there's future plans to refurbish, in it's raw state, it's fitting domain for a series set in Hell.

Bon Vayage.

Pastures new

Here I am in my new studio digs, feeling like the cat got the catnip, because it’s indoors, higher ceilings, central air, located in the same building I eat and sleep in.

 Yes, part of me will miss the romance of the open air that was my trek to the little converted garage on the mountain, the occasional harvest mouse that would scutter along the rafters, even the sticky black widow spiders web that would dangle from the corners of old canvases. I could even handle the ball chilling winters. 
I shalln’t miss the longest hottest summer in living memory though, which along with the dust and smoke had rendered Planet Mercury as uninhabitable as-well, it’s namesake. 

Looking down are some of the pieces from the new series, Paradiso’s Fall, which I just happen to be at the halfway point of, so it’ll be interesting to see if the remainder will be influenced by the new workspace.

 It’ll certainly be less like camping.

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.

Setting Out Ones Stall- David Van Gough comes to La Bodega Galleries and Studios

And so, the show ended yesterday, but it's not over by any rotund ladies long stretch.

Here in the afterlife, Purgatorium will still be available to purchase directly from the gallery until January 2015, and although nothing official yet, we are still Bashing out (see what I did there?) tentative plans to extend the remainder of the show in another form. Details to be announced as and when they happen. 

A million plans a million dreams.

In the interim, there will be no laurel lounging, because the prodigal son is returned, or at least walking in a new pair of shoes. 
Which is why I am stoked to tell you all that from October 8th, I shall be working from the Artist collective at La Bodega gallery and studios in Barrio Logan San Diego, at studio V-quite aptly.

There will be regular shows and I'm looking forward to the local folks dropping by for a cuppa and checking out whats on the easel.

I'll follow with more of the particulars soon,but for now-David it's back to work for you my son.

Speaking in tongues-notes from an easel work in progress by David Van Gough

Here I am, working on the beginning of the end, though still four short of that sum when all said and undone. 
Had wanted to be chronological about it, do each piece in sequence, tying the whole grand finale up in a neat bow. 
Then I hit a wall on the one before and apropos with all these blood moons, needed the salvation of retribution, as opposed to merely feeling like a madman chipping at a mountain with a toothpick.

What a caper this art thing is, like inclement weather eh? 

It's at such times that I realize the paintings exist entirely on another plain to their earlier sketched counterparts, and looking backward is often like retracing a forgotten trail obscured by brush or at least a sable. 

I realize I'm talking riddles, but the conversations I have in my head seldom make sense.    

I suppose artists are just cryptologist's of their past.  


 

Median Point

A work in progress of the piece currently on my easel-the Sycorax manifest as three sisters, or if you like, Shakespeare, Chekhov and Weishaupt in tow.There's a dinner party right there, and as good a piecemeal for what I have on my plate right now.

 I'm at the halfway point you see , the eye of the storm I suppose, the midway curse-too far to go back, the point of no return. I have Dali up the rear, because when it doubt, one of his crutches will always do-a bigger stick to beat me with. I'll save my thoughts on the mustachioed minstrel for another time.

You can't see, but the Sycorax is spewing a fetid,toxic, black river-a virulent paint slug warping and manifesting into a mishapen hound. Like the words and images that dog us throughout,  it's something that's vexed me of late-the legacy of what I do, the cause and effect, the imprint on the ether. If any.

We are all sinister architects in one form or another.

Dark intents

 

A yawning Satyr-a sketch detail from one of the new works, as good a point as any to state the years task ahead, or at least eight short months of it.  

So-purgatory in Purgatorium- a year of dark intents, because the nights are already drawing in, the days longer with them-the stubble greying on my chinny chin chin. 
 At times each painting feels like a scab you long to pick at endlessly, except Septembers deadline spills in through the studio cracks, calling time before the year has begun,and as much as it's about the alchemy of drying paint right now, we're already hemorrhaging eight days into January, and I'm trying hard to keep my fevered brain on the now. Anything beyond feels intangible and full of unquantifiable possibility-maybe even disappointment.  

Perhaps that is the Artists modus, the relentless need to create, to quell the endpoint, deafen the inevitable silence,fill in the gaps.

Except I can't think of that right now-I have dark intents.

Onwards then.