Found Some Drawings From 2006

Trying to clear out some junk, and you know with me that is a major feat. But as they say, live in hope.

I tried to clear some stuff from the file cabinet and came across this pamphlet from 2006 when I was in London, UK. I went to White Chapel gallery which is at the end of Brick Lane, an incredible immigrant portion of London.

These drawings were made on the tube and I must have been passing Black Friars at the time.

Weird, I would have never remembered even doing these drawings but now that I look at this woman reading the paper I actually have a vague memory of this person, being in the manky tube. 

This show, Inner Worlds Outside, was full of outsider art and had images by current art darling, Darger, the Chicago janitor cum Art genius post 1970s death.



I love the cover image, it is at once Victorian and Cycladic at the same time, by Francis Picabia, definitely not an art outsider for reals.

Here is a close up of Darger's intense paintings of the Vivian Girls as they fight their epic battles.

Some of the artists in the show were also Madge Gill (a Clairvoyant), Dubuffet, James Ensor (Belgium's Famous Painter!!!yes, you TMBG fans) Miro and Adolf Wolfi. A real mix of established and outsiders who dealt with some similar issues.


here is that Wolfi guy, I like this image too.

If you wanna learn more about outsider art,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_art   you can find a lot of artists to check out.

Its kinda a tricky thing as so many of the people who profess to be outsiders are part of the mainstream art world, obviously not your Darger types who are penniless insane hermits who get discovered after death.   Dubuffet, a "artist" coined the Art Brut or Raw Art term and that applied to the art of the insane, prisoners or naive artwork he collected. In today's 'nothing is really alternative' world, outsider art is kinda a genre- in this one man's opinion.

Upcoming work/Ideas

I have been trying to get back into the studio and I have this very specific couple of ideas that I want to get to- One of them is an image of the Lovers card from the Tarot deck, specifically the Ryder set.

Like all of the cards, there is a great deal of stuff going on in the picture, I want to play with that a bit.  

Not that I know much about the Tarot deck. 

Back in the 90s though, I was back in school for my masters at the now defunct Bretton Hall University, my room mate, the good Stephanie (long story) was working on these large paintings of deck, creating her own interpretations of them. I don't have any images of her work but I do have some sketches I made during these epic late night drawing sessions ( she would routinely dye her hair with greens and reds from this brand Manic Panic -Live fast and Dye-your hair  It stuck with me. All fuelled by consuming large quantities of chocolate covered espresso beans, me with my long hair....It is right out of an episode of Portlandia) Here are some of those drawing/paintings-

We emailed recently, and neither of us has had a chocolate covered espresso bean since.

sketches from London-Rubens to Paula Rego

When I was in London a few months ago, I had to go a few times to the National gallery in Trafalgar Square to see one of my favorite paintings, this lion hunt by Rubens. It is unfinished but I would like to think that he saw it as finished as it is- really bold and anticipates the romantics like Gericault and Delacroix by about 100 years.

It is a really fun piece to look at- the energy in this painting.

Below is a little sketch i did in my notebook, normally I just look at this painting for a long time.





In the nice restaurant at the gallery, there is this fantastic almost graffiti like piece that Paula Rego painted, based on the collection in the National Gallery. Her work incorporated the few images of females in the paintings. It is a long beautiful piece but you cannot get a postcard or anything, these are just a few sketches. It rifts off of Spanish/Portuguese painted tiles and always makes me think of that imaginary Synagogue that Salman Rushdie describes in The Moor's Last Sigh where the main character's mother is interpreting the tiles and telling the future.

Anyways, she is a fascinating artist (to me at least) and her paintings deal with childhood taboos, story telling she does a bit of it all.

click this link to see a minute or two of Paula talking about here studio and how she works

I remember nothing about this