Bad Vibes painting by David Van Gough

This piece is called Bad Vibes, and is something of a key for the series I suppose.
Its the final piece, and although I'm a day from calling it a day-or at least a month, I could argue that the quagmire of madness and festering research, that surrounds the Manson case will never end. 

It struck me yesterday, that given ten years I could find myself still peeling back layers, and that this entire series could look like a different beast by then. Perhaps I'll do an anniversary edition with some bonus tracks.

Perhaps not.

As far as this particular project goes, all will be revealed soon.

First P/Review at Midnight Dreary

The ever eloquent Dahlia Jane, has just previewed the show over at her darkly blog-Upon a Midnight Dreary-where you can see previews for three of the works for my Man/son show, alongside her usual razor sharp insights by clicking the title link below. Thank you mon amie...

Man/son and the haunting of the American Madonna

Man/Son Press release

Hyaena Gallery Presents:

MAN/SON and the Haunting of the American Madonna

Oil Paintings by David Van Gough

October 1 through October 31

Opening Reception: Saturday, October 6, 8 pm to 12 am

 

Hyaena Gallery

1928 W. Olive Ave.

Burbank, CA 91506

hyaenagallery.com

Bill Shafer, Director

info@hyaenagallery.com

Artist Website: http://davidgoughart.com

On Saturday, October 6, David Van Gough reveals a dark new series inspired by one of Los Angeles' most enduring and infamous villains.  From Aleister Crowley to Charles Manson, Liverpool to LA, MAN/SON explores an artistic evocation of America's occult underbelly.  Taking cues from the bloody epithet's left at the crime scenes, and associated key phrases, the series draws upon his own year-long research into what he terms as sinister architecture, conspiracy, clandestine rituals, magic symbols and the tragic muse-Sharon Tate, recapitulated as the American Madonna and child.

Artist Statement:  

Growing up in Liverpool in the 70's was akin to living in a forgotten town.
The golden gate to the new frontier that had been the shipyards lay dormant.  The modern tenements that had been constructed on the promises of post-war zeal two decades earlier, now lay in ruin.
And the Beatles had disbanded in 1970.
Yet they were still ubiquitous.  The chorus of moptop's echo on every wireless was Liverpool's swansong.
Meanwhile, thousands of miles away in California, time had been called on the Sixties.  And a dreadful pall hung over the subsequent era like an incomprehensible epitaph: Helter Skelter and the Manson Murders.
Back in my Liverpool bedroom overlooking Anfield cemetery, a few yards from the railway line where four year old Jamie Bulger would be murdered by two boys in the mid 1980's, I was immersed in the subculture of fantagoria -- Hammer Horror, Dennis Wheatley, Man,Myth and Magic -- little realizing that terrible events in an affluent suburb of LA, and a song by Liverpool's favorite sons, were intertwined with Friday night Horror staples such as Rosemary's Baby and The Fearless Vampire Killers.
In my journey, there have been threads that go beyond mere happenstance, symbols and ciphers that are window dressing for something profound and dark beneath. In commencing then with the new series, utilizing the tragic muse and slain Madonna figure of Sharon Tate as a symbol for an endpoint, there was a need to relate and process that which is beyond understanding.
Peter Levenda's words in Sinister Forces Book III sum it up for me, "...for the occultist-there is truly "no such thing as coincidence," or more accurately, that coincidence is a clue that deeper connections exist between observable phenomena, that another force of nature is at work that we don't understand."

The MAN/SON series seeks to make sense of those fatal events of 1969, and what I have come to term as sinister architecture.

Artist Biography:

Working out of San Diego, David Van Gough is an oil painter who strives to expose the darkest recesses of the human spirit on canvas.  A self-proclaimed necrorealist, Van Gough grew up steps from a cemetery in gritty Liverpool.  Tormented throughout his life by Catholic guilt, mortality and paranoia, his paintings are fevered exorcisms, which comment upon both the futileness and poignancy of the universal human condition.

Gough was the Honoree Artist of 2010 at the San Diego Art Institute.  In 2009, Gough was published in the book Gothic Art Now.  In 2011 Darq Matter Publishing released Gough's collection of fine art and essays D3ad/Ends. He has exhibited at San Diego Art Institute, Oceanside Museum of Art, The Hive Gallery, Alexander Salazar Fine Art, Alternative Café, Mosaic Gallery, and Thumbprint Gallery.

Publicity contact for more information, interviews, high resolution images:

Dahlia Jane Upon a Midnight Dreary

847-712-2688

dahliaj@ymail.com   uponamidnightdreary.com

Hell to Skelter

It peaked 106° here on Friday, at least outside-in the studio I've been running a fever-a temperature akin to the lava flow of a volcano on the surface of Mercury. I've been living, eating and breathing the work. 

I wake up and go to sleep with it percolating in my brain, to the point were I've lost all objectivity on whether what I am doing is good anymore. I look at the work lined up at various stages of finish and I think it is-at least I hope it is-for Sharon Tate at least. 

A good friend in a similar storm, said something like that in such circumstances, one should supplant the concept for any finnesse, and as much as I try to remind myself that I am trying to accomplish in a month, something that should have taken me ten, it niggles at me as much as the nest of ants that I stem around the sugar bowl, daily.

Press release goes out tomorrow, I believe, a week to deadline and all will be revealed. In the meantime above is another detail teaser of the Healter Skelter piece.

Conspiracy fever

Amongst the works in progress, I'm realizing there's a very real path to madness in conspiracy. You begin to seek spurious connections and make irrational equations in everything.

Implausibity suddenly becomes possibility....the paranoia of numerology,a website that is a predictor to doomsday, the Illuminati, David-fucking-Icke. Its like a piss poor episode of the X Files-the ones after Mulder and Skully left.

And yet with the quagmire surrounding the Manson case, how can one damn so much such staggering coincidence?

Or are the elements merely the colliding threads of cosmic architecture, a sinister undercurrent with no purpose?

I walk this path daily, and I realise its not healthy, but eight to ten hours amongst the ravages of paintings,the unrelenting heat, the fumes and the shadow of Manson,will do that to you.

Speaking to a friend the other day about the series, I realized that wading through the mire of bullshit, is no different than setting a rationale for God-its like trying to fit chaos and happenstance into a divine plan for the a clandestine order of an omnipotent mind. 

What a great title actually, perhaps it should be the name of the final piece . I am just over half way, With just two weeks to complete another six pieces.

I remind myself theres enough insanity there.

From Madam Blavatsky to Charles Manson, Liverpool to LA, David Van Gough explores and artistic evocation of Americas occult underbelly, through a series inspired by one of its most infamous murders. Taking cues from the bloody epithet's left at the crime scenes, and associated key phrases, the series draws upon his own year long research into what he terms as sinister architecture, conspiracy, clandestine rituals, magic symbols and the tragic muse the pregnant Sharon Tate, recapitulated as the American Madonna and child.

Revolution nine

 

It must be over twenty years since I listened to the White Album in full-its one of those albums that seems so a part of cultural ubiquity (and for me at least) forever associated with the communal toke at college parties, that any impact it could have had, has long since passed me by.  I gave it another 'spin' today,minus the crackles,grooves and hemp: it still held a certain charm that did nothing to imbue an edge for my daubing, even after Helter Skelter had long finished. 
And then 'Revolution 9' kicked in, and it was like standing at the gates of Ceaser's Palace again. 
I wondered how, even in the dizzy haze of 'leb'-the resonance of this quagmire of dissonant sound didn't strike a wake up chord back then. The banshee carrion call of number nine repeated against a jarring backdrop of spectral phaze waiting to be encoded. 
But to whom? 
Manson, the Manchurian candidate?
Manson the cartoon messiah, a serial killer made for a cereal box generation?

I'm so immersed in the conspiracy bullshit-twelve months of revelation since what started as macabre homage to an adolescents love affair with a dead muse, and I can't think straight for the paint fumes and relentless heat.
And yet Revolution 9 sits like a skeleton stripped bare and redraped again as a eureka moment....something doesn't sit right.

Two paintings this week now completed-'Healter Skelter' (anagram of Easter Hell Trek) and 'God of Fuck'-umpteen to go in 24 days. And more weird phone calls that pick up with tapping on the line.
I must be onto something.