All Hallows sneak peak trick or treat

 The feast before Samhain is with us once again, the Danse Macabre for the fabled Aos Sí. Not for me some anecdote on a haunted gallery theme night. Anything relative to 'darker' art's is relegated as tacky as year old candy in a rotten Jack o Lantern this time of year at any rate. Much to my cost and chagrin.

Still, the spirits run freely through the studio, dark corners move and spells are cast with the wave of a sable.

 And I revert to my natural state.

Happy All Hallows.

The Ghost of Vincent.

"The sadness will last forever."
Van Goghs proported final words to Theo

This shall be my first Halloween for some time that I am not exhibiting anywhere.  
Enough ghosts and demons currently in the studio at any rate. 

There's the ghost of Vincent for instance, pinned to my wall, glaring accusingly with one withering eye. The other one-his left one-is looking resigned, filled with marine-flecked melancholy and suffering. That particular eye haunts my own work right now, imposing itself into each canvas like the plucked orb of Horus. 

Did Vincent truly suffer I wonder? 

The romantique parable is of his self imposed exile in Arles amongst spud headed peasants, harboring Daddy issues and a gradual realization of the gargantuan shadow cast by Rembrandt, whilst his search to capture light in liquescence and Oriental line became the vainglorious quest of a failed alchemist. All on his brothers dime I might add, until he ravaged sibling good will and stipend on Absinthe, harlots and Japanese art prints. 
Not the suffering of brokeback tilling of fields from dusk till dawn with the peasants he gilded, or even the nine to five for poor old Vince, just the artifice of the syphilitic Libertine in a garret, the actor slumming it for the Academy. 

 Vincent the artist messiah, the flameheaded madman suffering needlessly, and dying penuriously wretched to save the future of contemporary Art. Vincent a standard bearer for greatness equated with drug addled, ritualized self sacrifice. Vincent the veritable Lou Reed of Modern Art. Vincent and the second shooter, because a death doesn't truly become a myth without a hefty (over)dose of conspiracy.

Mischievous brats with bad aim or not,there go Rothko,Pollock and his ilk making martyrs of us all.Or at least suffering taken to its histrionic, ignoble endpoint with Granto's trite Eye-jaculations;

The residual misery stain's the 20th century and beyond, thicker than impasto, making soothsayers of passive observers hoping to unravel an element of raw human truth amongst the chaos of stumbled ill rendering, whilst faded print's of sunflower's hang innocuously from a million vestibule wall's. 

Fuck you Vincent.

Introducing Skyflower Creations by Lani

Often beyond the confines of my studio, accompanying the sounds of my own cursing, the voices in my head and whatever happens to be on my playlist, can be heard the diligent chug, chug, whir of my wife sewing.

 For let it be known, and make no mistake about it,  that Lani is the true accomplished artist in this household.  

 For years, I've watched in awe, as she manicures the most delicate cloth with silken thread and animate it into being, and often at shows, the last thirteen Halloweens, daily living-I have been the beneficiary of her remarkable gift to give fabric character, as have countless others. Costumes, contemporary clothing, a dizzying gamut of ingenious adornments,  no longer shall she be silent all these years, because her talents now have an online presence:Skyflower creations.

 Follow the thread- thread and her luxurious needlework by subscribing to her blog.

SKYFLOWER CREATIONS BLOG

Van Gough's inspiration's and alchemy

Inspired and at the behest of a recent facebook post by my talented daughter-Emma-above is a stack of current obsessions feeding the artistic alchemy. 

By virtue of abundance, it's not quite as diverse or impressive as  Bowie's top 100 list of books, which appeared this week and which I was happy to note does include one of the tomes on my own current pile.

Depending on the canvas consuming me at the time, the list is generally interchangeable of course, and most of the books are digested purely for invocation,  but as latitude and longitute into the geography of the new series, it's a pretty good GPS.

The list from top left is as follows:

Salvador Dali-50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship
Valazquez, the technique of genius by Jonathan Brown and Carmen Garrido
The Encyclopedia of Mythology by Arthur Cotterell
The PreRaphaelites by Trewin Copplestone
The Divine Comedy with Illustrations by Gustav Dore (translation by Henry W. Longfellow)
The complete works of Shakespeare
Images of Horror and Fantasy by Gert Schiff
Creepy presents Richard Corben-the definitive collection of the artist's work from Creepy and Eerie!
On Ugliness by Umberto Eco
Art of the Late Middle Ages by Hans H. Hofstatter
Van Gogh a self-portrait. Letters revealing his life as a painter selected by W.H.Auden
The Devil-the Archfiend in Art from the sixth to the sixteenth century by Luther Link
The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte
Purgatorio by Dante Alighieri
The Secret Temple-Masons, Mysteries and the founding of America by Peter Levenda
Portrait of the Artist as ab young man and the Dubliners by James Joyce
Like you've never been away by Paul Trevor

Van Gough at Molotov Gallery

 Contributing to a little group exhibit later this week-recycling several works from the Man/son thing last year to a showcase at Molotov gallery-here in San Diego. It'll be my first appearance (proper) in my adopted hometown for some time, though as is customary, expect bugger all in the way of fanfare from the usual S.D periodicals. 

Still, since it's my only scheduled show until the unveiling of the new series a year from now, it gives those local folk that were sorry not to make it up to the Hyaena last October, a fighting chance to see the leftovers.

Fiddling whilst Rome burns, by Van Gough

That's the new piece propped on my easel, and it strikes me that sometimes, the work I do- for all its predisposition-eerily resounds the now. 

That sucking sound you hear is the canvas so dense with dark matter, it's like a black hole reflected in an ebon mirror.

It's the parable of Dante: a veritable inferno beyond the soaring temperatures and the demons of my studio, beyond the faux outrage over a Disney Monarch shaking her skinny arse on national tv, and a fallen crop of bloodless children littering the streets to the strains of a news anchors soundbyte. There's another ensuing war brewing like a witches cauldron in the middle east, a reactor in the orient spewing radiation like acid in a well, hubble-bubble, toil and trouble casting the shadow of an apocalyptic endpoint that both feeds the nihilists black imaginings and dismembers the optimists servant.  To be an artist sometimes means being possessed with the rage of the aggrieved and the despondency of the paralyzed.

In other word's it's enough fuel to stoke the fire and extinguish it, if only because as little air that moves through the studio right now, there is no living in a vacuum at such times.

Serial Killer Culture poster design

Perhaps it's jumping the gun, but in my haste I wanted to share this remarkable poster design by Kevin Stone, for the forthcoming documentary release of Serial Killer Culture. Chosen following a competition for the best submission that will accompany the cover of the DVD release, It has a gorgeous retro feel which-although incongruous-when one considers the meat of the matter, perfectly encapsulates the tenet of Borowski's purpose.

Having long dabbled in the arena of design for the occasional tossed bone, it's a welcome and refreshingly intelligent, reminiscence of era's past.