Death Mask

 

 One could say I'm little late to the game,given that we are almost nine months on since Covid 19 first swung it's scythe from East to West, before settling permanently like some festering Quatermass, washed up by a dark tide on US shores. In a year so defined by it's casualties, there strikes me that no better image encapsulates it's pall than "Triumvirate"-a piece from my Theothanatos series from a decade ago.

 

Resurrected from my own archival boneyard, the biomorphic trinity of bile tinted skulls, grins wider than Conrad Viet , like some grim, gloating totem of tautology.

Doom wear, sported on this occasion by my lovely wife-Lani, and emblazoned with a symbolic reminder of why wearing masks are so necessary in the first place.

They're available for $20 a piece from my store along with signed prints of the original.

Triumvirate Face Masks

Triumvirate Signed Prints

 

 

Paradiso’s Fall-Trailer 2

Another little video feature, in which I talk about death and the art of living. Just some of the motivation for the piece “Whats Dark Within, Illuminate” for the show Paradiso’s Fall, this Saturday at Dark Art Emporium

Greg Escalante

1955-2017

I suppose that its the natural order of things, that the older one gets, the more depleted the inner circle becomes. As Flaubert once remarked “A friend who dies, is something of you that dies”

Still it sucks.

In the case of Greg Escalante, it really fucking sucks. And whilst I can sadly never claim to have been ‘tight’ in the chumminess league, for the short breadth of time that I did know him, I got the sense of someone who was genuinely altruistic, someone who was as cool as a latter day beau Brummel, but didn’t brandish any of the icy heirs and graces, one might expect within the art scene.

A few of the short stories of immediate reminiscence I have then.

Though we’d been introduced once in passing many years ago, like a lot of aspiring artists I’d hoped to get on his radar, but for whatever reason, nothing had really stuck.  Hopes dashed then, and just as I’d all but called ‘time gentleman please’ on any  future aspiration in that regard, fuck me if the man himself didn’t wander into La Bodega gallery one day, and spying my art through the window, make a beeline for my studio.
Looking around at the art lining the walls, with that rare kind of awe you can only hope to imagine a doting parent might exact, he stopped short to see me sitting gobsmacked in the corner, before extending a hand with the humble and self-effacing introduction -‘Hi, I’m Greg, and I’d love to put you in my next show’.

Later, after he’d left to go next door to the Mexican restaurant ISalud,  he returned to rave about the tacos, and show me a video he’d taken on a recent trip to Galway, because he remembered I’d said I was homesick.

In the weeks that followed he sent me a video message, turning the pages of the promotional spread in Juxtapoz for the show, Dark realism/dark surrealism. I was thrilled and honored, and in the background, he made a whistling sound like a firework ascending. Which is kind of apt when one thinks about it, because he certainly put a rocket through the post Rothko/Pollock dribble that dominated the white box, until low brow shone a beacon like a neon diner on a midnight highway.

And now he’s left the diner, before pudding some will say, but still he paid the bill and even left a generous tip.

He’s on the road to the next destination.

His fedora and his many other hats will be sorely missed. I certainly doff my cap to him.

The Death of the '60's by David Van Gough

 

"There was something horrible permeating the air in LA in those days. The stench of Manson and the Sharon Tate murders." 
David Bowie talking about living in LA in the 1970's

August 9th 1969. It was meant to be the dawning of the Age of Aquarius....the final median before the new decade.Two weeks on, the grainy spectacle of the Moon landings still resonated, mollifying the shadow of Vietnam and two dead Kennedy's. It was also the anniversary of Nagasaki*, as well as the birth date of Ed Gien. Two disparate moments, connected by a thread no less devastating in its repercussion.

For whilst the events at 10050 Cielo Drive that night, paled when measured against the true horror of 80,000 deaths, the fallout that radiated from the bloody carve up of a pregnant celebrity and her three friends was a secession on the hedonism of the decade, farther reaching in the collective conscious (or conscience) of America's fucked up tapestry, than any atom bomb.
The dawning of the new age was ritualized with the blood of an innocent.

That's the true travesty of Manson legacy, the true infallible obscenity, a decade christened by a faux slain Madonna and her unborn infant.

The 70's stillborn. 

There could only be ashes beyond.

* for those wanting to pursue further Occult significance around the date, the flag from Nagasaki is the five pointed star, with five hermetic crosses in the center.


The Man/son show runs until the 31st October at Hyaena Gallery, Burbank CA.  

Mourning Tea-new still life study by David Gough

Mourning Tea
11" x 14"
Acrylic on Canvas

Still life isn't something I ever felt a calling toward, but it doesn't hurt to occasionally stretch other muscles.

This quick study started out as an idea I had for something I wanted to ruminate on between the pages of my forthcoming book-Dead/Ends.
It's much better served I think as a quick study, which I've done in a semi-impressionist style for incongruity, but it deals with that thing we English have of procuring tea whenever there is news of a bereavement. Having been the recipient of such news and the obligatory brew, its always struck me as an odd juxtaposition-the cold chill of mortality served with a hot, sweet comfort of a tea in a delicate china cup-the forced civility of familiar rituals and table etiquette over human frailty and any potential social discomfort.

For such occasions, I've oft been tempted to craft a teapot from an skull, of course the various cracks and crevices of the dome would have to be plumbed to avoid leakage, but there the pot would sit amongst the doilies and china, grinning like....well death.

Here however-a black kettle will have to suffice-(because of course its a pot calling a...you got it), and as well as being a nod to my own artistic legacy, the skull having fallen (and oh how I delight in little symbolic gestures like that) there's that whole thing of a 'watched pot never boils', which could be as much about my artistic fortunes as anything.

And if there's any doubt sill left about my intent for this piece, there's the discarded pine cone, spent of its seed and looking for all the world like a lumpen, shriveled turd, either casting a reflection or staining the virgin white of the table cloth, depending on your preference.

Not bad for a mornings work.

Artifact-Transition-pulling back the veil

Transition-Pulling Back the Veil (2004)
12" x 16"
Acrylic on Panel

"Transition-pulling back the veil", explored the notion of transient fourth walls that exist in society,between this life and the next-that existence is merely a construct, a set piece of performance art.From the deaths head Harlequin calling the shots, to the fallen, battle scarred muse, the hybrid fish man who longs to return to the azure sea, to the boy staring between the torn curtain and his monochromatic life, it revealed an undercurrent sense of being immobilized in a no mans land filled with lies and artifice.It's still one of my favorite things I've ever done, and is a pivotal work, because I'd found my feet as well as a set of symbols and subtexts that would inform my work indefinitely from that point.

Notes from an Easel-liberating death from religion

Getting so close with this piece.
Recent postings of its progress on Facebook have drawn wrong comparisons with the 'Don't Wait' slogan adopted by Christian bumper stickers and such. I honestly had no idea about their use of the image until very recently.

Like I said when I first contemplated painting it, it was an image which I'd conjured up myself, long before falling upon the old 18th century woodcut. To my mind, the image represents a hollow existence in servitude of death more than anything else. In a sense I'm liberating it from religion.

Save some small tweaks, the piece is done.


Have the no small task of dividing my collection for the upcoming shows in October. I'm still some ways from completing all the pieces I have in mind too.

Today I have to drop off two works plus easels at the Alex Salazar show, before completing the collaboration with Mark Jesinoski for Saturdays showcase.

No rest for the wicked as my old nan used to say.

Notes from an Easel-Corrosion

Nothing incenses me more, than when I see a lesser artist dismissing another-as I've stated on innumerable occasions, and will state beyond the point of broken record status-armchair critiques are the easiest things in the world, and in the blogosphere, it is so much easier to be disparaging about something, than get up off ones arse with the intent of Bowies lyric from 'Queen Bitch' resonating-'Oh God, I could do better than that.'
So further to my rant about a certain abstract art, I placed my dribbles where my mouth is, and painted a piece that is a conscious attempt, at combining abstraction as more than an embellished flourish for contemporanious sake.

'Corrosion'. depicts the measure of time melting away, much in the same way as the disintegration and decay of the physical and cognitive. Man and machine as a simulacrum of paint, giving this piece something of a unintentional steampunk flavor, but its there nevertheless.

I would have posted a link to the auction, but its already been purchased, which is marvelous.

In other news, some potentially interesting things afoot, should they happen.

Notes from an Easel-part 76-Trinity

Title: Trinity
Size: 11" x 14"
Medium: Acrylic on Canvas

As Nietzsche said "if you gaze long into the abyss, then the abyss will gaze back at you"..In the shadows of my abyss are the triumvirate of friends I lost to colliding cars and disease. The temptation then was to give the piece names like some sort of plaque, but then to do so would be to suggest a monument to heroes, and as much as they were to me, there is nothing heroic about an end snuffed out prematurely.
In the crevices of these melting angular craniums, there are echoes that there is no open armed three-tiered father figure to kiss away the rich vestiges of fleeting life with a new one. What the fuck could such an entity say to indemnify such cruelly snatched fate anyway?
For the concept is as empty and brittle as a skull. A fossil of something that was once vivid, animated and filled with potential. A wasteland where nothing will ever grow.

Almost certainly, this will be one of the scaled pieces for the shows in October.
I've been listening to Big Audio Dynamites brilliant classic E=mc2 and feeling like the angry young man of my teens again, suffused with rage for the robbery of living at the hands of power brokers and merchants behind closed doors. Which is why I shall not be revealing the next piece until tomorrow, because its informed by some of the vitriol I've been feeling lately about the 'situation' here in the US, and as such could be possibly seen as controversial.

Certainly, it will require a post all to itself.

Notes from an Easel-Death of Winter new painting by David Gough

Title: 'The Death of Winter' (2009)
Size: 15" x 30"
Medium: Oil on canvas

Inspired in parts by a recent sabbatical to Big Bear,the cold dystopia of Cormac McCarthys 'The Road', and the result of listening to Brett Andersons 'Slow Attack' album continuously, it is a counterpoint to all those Kinkaid style depictions of cosy Christmas card scenes, and relates symbolically with the end of the solstice, the death cults relationship with seasonal transition, and the intangible feeling one gets of ones own mortality, looking across a frozen lake in the clutches of winter.

Notes from an Easel-57-Death of Winter

Despite the finality of my signatures flourish, I shalln't be able to tell if the piece is complete until it's dry. Diffusing the black point's to grey, really gives it a nice depth of middle ground. I'm pleased-its a rather delicious counterpoint to the candy-cane, force feeding of the seasons sentiments.

That said, I am not completely, curmudgeonly about the graces of Xmas, so to set the mood, here's something cooler than chilled eggnog- Bowie and Bing singing 'Peace on Earth, Little Drummer boy' back in the good old days of 77:

Notes from an Easel-Death of Winter work in progress part two by David Gough

There is something 1970's panoramic about this piece-my mind keeps projecting Hockney, Led Zeps 'Houses of the Holy' LP cover, and the backdrops of 'Watership Down'.

As a kid of that era, it's all too telling.

Despite the fact that the scene is from Californian vistas of Big Bear, there is something really parochially English about the work.

As a kid of that country, it's all too telling.

Another thing, as simplistic as the composition appears, distinguishing the indestinguishable has been a tremendous challenge-trees obscured by a blizzards guaze have meant rendering oil paint as thinly as a watercolorist-layering in light washes.

I'm getting there.

Notes from an Easel 53-Death of Winter

Fridays are my only concession to the mundanity of the working week, which is only ever punctuated in the evenings by occasional ruminations at my easel. On other days, I still feel like I'm merely faking it, a Sunday afternoon hobbyist inauthentically posing as the real deal, because the drag of scratching for a living at every other time, leaves me with a clutch of hours, fighting total exhaustion late into the dying candle of the evening.Fridays I afford myself the afternoons,locked in my studio-five hours of uninterrupted contemplation of paint-its like a enema for the soul.
With, the wintery timbres of Brett Andersons latest offing, en loop in the distance, the paint flowed like alchemy-I'm loving the new piece so much, it touches the innately unpronounceable chasm of living with a knowledge that someday it will all end, the awe of the nature and the passage of time. I can't wait to finish it.

Notes from an Easel-Part 52-Death of Winter

Having laid down a light wash, and distinguished the details, I started to work in the background because I feel that as with the Valley piece, the geography for this piece,carries the same weight as the message. Previous deaths head pieces have been more informed by the concept, the background seeming something of an afterthought, although not entirely.

Its a process I'm learning to embrace more and more, I think for the longest time-perhaps too long, I've held a general mistrust of the real, believing that feeding entirely from the subconscious was the purest form of expressing-that to draw from life somehow diluted the idea. I still think that's the case-certainly with someone like Dali, the more technically he drew from the real, the less his work seemed informed by the surreal, but for me it feels like the work is becoming more cohesive and focused, evolving a germ of an idea into an entirely different animal. Its hugely exciting, and I've even taken to carrying a sketchbook everywhere and sketching, which always felt like somehow an attempt to elevate the mundane, but its something I am enjoying again.

Notes from an Easel part 51-Death of Winter

the smaller study for this piece has gone through something of an evolution, certainly inspired by our weekend sabbatical in Big Bear, and having seen 'The Road' the other night. Despite the minimalism of this scratchy pencil study, putting flesh on those bones perse, is a hugely exciting prospect for me, encompassing everything I've longed to express about the bleak disquiet of winter, peering into murky icy waters seeing your breath dissipate in the cold air, and feeling the goosebumps through your soul.

Notes from an easel-work in progress-the Valley stage seven by David Gough

After a weeks sabbatical from the new piece, I was hungry again. There is something transcendental about the almost imperceptible pace of working the minutiae, I imagine it to be the closest thing to the repose of meditative prayer, for myself at least. Still a long road ahead to my final intention, but I do see a light at the end of my own corridor.

Notes from an easel-work in progress-the Valley stage six by David Gough

Hours are dedicated to the piece a day, and yet it feels like I'm working at a snails pace, so diminishing seem the returns-its the ultimate game of endurance, and I'm gritting my teeth all the way to the end-somewhat ironic when you consider the subject matter.

You can't tell from the photograph, but I've subtly begun to fill in the marble effect on the walls-I was undecided up until this point whether I was going to replicate the hallway in the Whaley house completely, because it seemed that marble had a conotation of 80's sheen. It struck me however, that as death is indiscriminate, regardeless of ostentation or ghetto, so should my approach, and so it stuck.

Notes from an easel-work in progress-the Valley stage four by David Gough

I've never worked so meticulously before-but the precision of perspective and angles requires nothing less-my concentration so acute that at times I have to remind myself to draw a breath.

The image haunts me, and my mind finds itself hearing Bowie's 1972 rendering of My Death by Jaques Brel for some bizarre reason-particularly the lines 'whatever lies behind the door...'
The performance of which has never failed to move me, particularly at the denouement where Ziggys final lines are eclipsed by the audience cries.

Notes from an easel-work in progress-the Valley stage two by David Gough

After some reflection, I felt the title for this piece is The Valley-which is from the 23rd psalm-'though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...' which was something I was taught to say every morning, even before I could write.

Here are the latest working progressions, along with detail and preliminary working drawing.

Notes from an easel part three-sex and death working title

Without a hint of irony, my wife and I spent the first day of 2009 in Tombstone. An extraordinary raw place-which left an undefinable mark on me-I shall be making a full picture post as time presents.

With the show looming however, I wanted very much to display the latest progression of the piece- that I'm hoping (wet paint being the biggest factor) to debut at the Ruby Room this Thursday.

Its odd to see the thought processes evolve on the canvas as I go-what began as a fairly pedestrian exposition on sex, death and the religious interplay between the two, has developed into a paradox of imagery: the veneration of the virgin, the symbolic sharing of blood during the sacrament, the aversion to menstruation in some religious cultures, the curtains of the confessional booth, the curtains of Amsterdam, the curtain of blood, the female sex as a symbol of life, the skull as a symbol of death, the whole life, death and resurrection show.

I'm fairly content with how its progressing,but as is always the case with my work, wish I had more time. I'll post final progressions this evening.