Thursday, September 25, 2008

wow.

This fella has some interesting work. It successfully makes me uncomfortable on a very base level. It's kind of like not being able to trust the traditional themes of security, such as teddy bears, rainbows and fluffy clouds. Perhaps it's a lot like the jingly clown under the bed out to get you.

The recurring characters and tension throughout all these prints are great.

Click here if you dare.

5 comments:

SQLFunkateer said...

Good gracious green greco-gravy, and other such colloquial expressions!

Those were strangely entrancing. The man certainly has a vivid imaginary world locked up in his mind. All of it has a very classic cartoon look and feel, I wish I knew cartoon history well enough to make a good comparison, but I don't, so I'll just have to just agree with "wow".

grk said...

Agreed. The one where the tree is trying to carve himself legs to run while the chipmunk is calling him out to the lumberjack on the horizon is especially tense. I actually feel a touch of horror for the tone of treason and desperation.

Funny, I don't feel that when Tom the cat gets his head peeled back by a lawnmower.

SQLFunkateer said...

Indeed, that was probably favorite one. The horror and shame of the tree, being caught carving legs for itself, and the stunned shock of the squirrel. Very very tense.

Funny, until you mentioned that I didn't get the meaning of trying to escape the approaching woodcutter. I'm not sure whether I enjoyed it more before. With the "escaping the woodcutter" meaning it makes more sense, and its more, like you say, about fear and treason and that frightened anticipation of knowing you aren't moving fast enough to escape. However, in my first (I think mistaken) interpretation, it was more absurd, more like the tree trying to carve legs for it in shamed privacy, with an unwelcome and unforeseen discovery by the squirrel who can only scream out in shock and horror.

The sad thing is these paintings are best as a collection...as you say, the continuity of characters and themes enhances them quite a bit. Even if you had enough expendable income to plop $1800 on one, it still wouldn't have quite as much power as when displayed with all of its other fellow-paintings, as on this blog.

Would this be considered modern art, I wonder? Because I rather enjoy this stuff.

grk said...

I like the shame and squirrel horror at the carving of the legs idea. It's less frightening.

I don't think it's modern art. It's modern good, or post modern good, known as just dern good.

miss b said...

i really liked them. does that make me weird?