DESERT RELIGION

Initially, I wanted to make a puppet show for my MFA Thesis Exhibition, THE END IS EVER NIGH. It would have fit in perfectly with my imagery: humanity controlled by outside forces beyond their control.

However, my MFA was in Painting, not in Intermedia, Performing or Performance Arts. I felt it would be too much of a disconnect from the thrust of my Thesis. I also did not feel I had the time or experience necessary to plan out a proper puppet stage at an appropriate MFA Thesis level without enlisting help from people who already had their own crosses to bear.

Becoming a member of the Eye Lounge collective immediately gave me the push and experimental freedom necessary to begin to seriously think of doing a puppet show. The theme of my Eye Lounge solo show is the desert. The desert in the Bible, also translated as "wilderness" is a place for wandering, introspection, exile: a place to return from after spiritual revelation and visions. Since I have always lived in Arizona--near South Mountain and the radio tower lights--in a modernized "quasi-desert," I find this an experience that is hard to replicate in my own life.

I have gone on many hikes, twice to the Grand Canyon, but have never experienced "the desert." I did not feel lost, I do not feel deserted or wandering, because I know that I can go back anytime...there is a trail "back home." The Desert Fathers had no such conceit: they were always living in the desert, as they wanted to escape the modernization of the church as a legitimate, Roman institution. It became their new home for Christ.

Therefore, my home may be a desert, but it does not feel like a desert...there is always a way back home. I have to use my imagination in order to construct a scenario that could even come close to the experience of the Desert Fathers, John the Baptist, Christ himself, or St. John of Patmos.

I worked on a script for a puppet show: Jesus' Temptations (Matthew 4: 1-11) with Tommy Cannon, a puppeteer from the Great Arizona Puppet Theater. I wanted to tap into his humor and improvisational skill to amplify the sense of irreverence I want to convey in the banter between Jesus and Satan. Jesus maintains His cool throughout the process, tempted three times, to return from the experience steeled in His resolve. Satan, though defeated is unchanged by the experience, a Trickster who moves on to others to be made Fool.

I would like to think that it all happened in His mind, as does all of my imagery in mine: Satan may still have been real, as all visions are to the person experiencing them.

THE END IS EVER NIGH

MFA Thesis Exhibition,

Harry Wood Gallery, ASU. Tempe, AZ
November 2-13, 2009

Thesis Statement:

My body of work is envisioned by the spiritual matters of my upbringing. I was persistently taught that the world would end-- and be reborn-- in my lifetime.This world began to seem temporary; every achievement golden, every failure one of impending doom. I extrapolated later that if it had to end, it should take place in a spectacular way.

These paintings celebrate the narrative traditions of both Christian and Secular end-time scenarios through shifting depictions of fools and heroes, gods and demons: my cast of characters alter scale, form, color and role, as they always do in my imagination. I enjoy toying with boundaries between the sacred and profane in these tellings of Christian stories.

The players upon these stages occupy a mythic space; that is, they come from insubstantial ether that I formally compare to my cast of characters, shifting along and through unseen light sources, emerging from dark voids that hold infinite promise of unknown creation. The scenes continue to play out along the surface of landscapes fraught with the doubts that exist in all supernatural visions.

Dain Q. Gore

The Thesis process was incredible. I had the honor of working with many highly professional Professors during my stay at ASU, but three in particular became my Committee: Mark Pomilio, Forrest Solis, and Jerry Schutte. I was glad to work with new artists as well as familiar faces from my undergrad days at ASU (BFA Drawing, 2000).

Munny, Updated.

Being that many other more pressing matters lay at hand in the past, I didn't have much chance or motivation to take pictures of an in-progress Munny. I decided upon the Owl-design, as you can see above. Some of the symbols I wish to add are yet to be added, or have only been touched upon, but include:

-A single strand of silver hair, of which I have many more at the moment...

-Mariachi pants: I have always wanted a pair of those.

-Purple shirt alludes to my favorite symbolic color, Tekehelet (תכלת), a mysterious violet-purple whose original dye-recipe has been lost.

-Feet of clay (from the Bible, alluding to human fragility)

-Bugs in the hair (in the Vanitas genre of paintings, bugs alluded to Sin)

-Hebrew text of יהוה (YHWH) Yod-He-Vav-He, The Tetragrammaton--on the right hand, Dexter.

-Hebrew text of שָׂטָן (Satan) on the left hand, Sinister.

-A Tarot card behind the mask's string, not sure which to depict yet, thinking of The Fool, Death, The Hermit or The Hanged Man (my favorites)

-Additional masks to cover the already-masked face, more pictures of those to come.

Munny on My Mind...

So I've been wanting to paint my Munny for awhile. After some technical difficulties*, I am finally devising a schematic of what it would look like (in my mind). Actually painting it will come later. I am currently thinking: which artists inspire me the most, currently? What simple, direct color scheme would I use?

Some Examples
More Examples (LA Show)
More Examples (Mini Contest)

*Involving sticky acrylic that had to be sanded down

UPDATE! Some of my sketched-out designs...

UPDATE! 3-12-08
Inspired by Goya's Owls, I have decided to do another sketch. (see above fourth/last sketch in sequence)

Owls can be symbols of:
-Superstition (Goya)
-Heresy (Medieval Europe)
-Wisdom (Animist/Pantheist religions)
-Christ's Vigilance (Aderdeen Bestiary)

So I decided I liked the ambiguity of that image, as a mask.
 The theme will be a "self-portrait" of sorts, with traditional green-ink tattoos of YHWH on the Dexter (Right) side and Satan on the Sinister (Left) side. Other ideas I am toying with include feet of clay, and/or a trompe l'oiel magnifying glass on the belly-button to signify the navel-gazing qualities of the self-portrait...

My color scheme will be a simple warm-cool dichotomy, probably emphasizing reverse contrast through saturation levels.

Stay Tuned!!

My Life-Long Dreamytime Sequelmakery

Ghouls'n Ghosts was one of the most influential games I ever played. It has even guided, in some ways, my aesthetic when it comes to the very modus of Paintery Itself.

Here is a piece I wrote about this game, Hosted and Compiled by the venerable Mike Bevan and his Destroy all Monsters!.

And I present, once again, Ghasts'N Ghouls.


Of course, I have played with many other ideas...

...A Riddle?

How can one distinguish between a species and a mutant, if the representative creatures of both groups are long since dead or missing?

The Story Behind L'Académane

The title is a pun, an invented French compound of L'Académie (The Academy) and the suffix -mane (Maniac). The English translates as, predictably, "The Academaniac"

In France, L'Académie is also a vernacular shortening (coincidentally) for L'Académie Francaise, the body of minds considered to have compiled and officiated over what is "appropriate" in the language and grammar of the true Francophone. Anyone who deviates from these strictures is considered non-Francophone, or rather considerd a francophone. This would include many French dialects.

L'Académane is me, or at least what I could be, if I were more obsessive about erudition than I already am. The book-for-a-head motif is a nod to Arcimboldo's The Librarian. It also relates to the idea of being a collector of books as things rather than of the knowledge within them. I chose the monochromatic scheme to convey a sense of re-entering a world that is preserved and antiquated, the very concept of transmission of learning through dried pulp pages becoming more and more obsolete and quaint as time passes...

I entered this painting as a reception piece (morceau de reception)--again another reference, this time to the long-defunct Academy Francaise des Beaux Arts--upon beginning my tenure as an MFA Student-Teacher at ASU.

Dedicated to a Defunct Detective

A fleeting, five-minute sketch drawn on a whim would later become a timely epitaph...

The Final Words of Lear's Fool

"I'll speak a prophecy ere I go:

When priests are more in word than matter;

When brewers mar their malt with water;

When nobles are their tailor's tutors;

No heretics burn'd, but wenches' suitors;

When every case in law is right;

No squire in debt, nor no poor knight;

When slanders do not live in tongues;

Nor cutpurses come not to throngs;

When usurers tell their gold i' the field;

And bawds and whores do churches build;

Then shall the realm of Albion
Come to great confusion:
The comes the time, who lives to see't,
That going shall be made with feet.
This prophecy Merlin shall make; for I live
before his time." [Exit.

~The Fool; King Lear, Act III, Scene II

An Infernal Contraption

A witnessed speculation of events which have transpired, based on first-hand experiences with said contraption, all true.

It is an incredibly small object; a white, capsule-shaped wand that fits into the palm of the hand, capable of wondrous, beautiful and (for some, perhaps) horrible things. A sigil on the face of the wand controls the magic from mortal flesh to its false ivory internal workings...the small, blinking lights would frighten the ignorant, but the sounds would astonish or humble.

Attached to it is a flexible tether. This must be the transit line by which the magic is channeled, perhaps via the elves who carry the musical notes from one place (the Machine-ling) to another (the mortal's impressionable brain). I never imagined such magic to be possible in so tiny an environment.

The sounds emanate from a tether from a sort of tiny beacon. I see people everywhere with it injected into their heads. They act as if it is a natural consequence of being a human.

Of whom does he speak?

"Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

--Karl Marx

The Tautologies

From dictionary.com:

Tautology:

1.) a. Needless repetition of the same sense in different words; redundancy.
b. An instance of such repetition.

2.) Logic. An empty or vacuous statement composed of simpler statements in a fashion that makes it logically true whether the simpler statements are factually true or false; for example, the statement "Either it will rain tomorrow or it will not rain tomorrow."

Not to be confounded with the oxymoron or the paradox, the logical anomaly known as the tautology is a fascinating phenomenon.

Perhaps one of the most interesting tautologies are those that transcend languages or are resultants of linguistic misinterpretation:

1.) Pomodoro tomato is literally, translated as a redundancy,

tomato tomato/pomodoro pomodoro.


2.) Manos: The Hand of Fate (fr. wikipedia)

hands x2


Interesting also is the temporal tautology, which would be redundant based on one's context either historically or chronologically.

Siam Thai, a restaurant in San Francisco. Two places which are literally the same place, but at different times in history.

Istanbul, not Constantinople...except when it was Constantinople, after having been Istanbul originally; but it hasn't always been Istanbul, either. Essentially, it is both places because it has been both places...perhaps a technicality, but it is technically true.

Let's dispense with Yogi Berra's redundant witticisms...need I say more than the fact that they have been said?

The Four Humours;

Or, A noteworthy blip in the (admittedly short) History of Modern Medicine.

~~~~~

Originators:

1st Asklepios (mythical),

Then Hippocrates (He of the Oath)

and Then Galen.

~~~~~~

Disorders of the body were once symbolised by body type (physiognomy), color, and miscellaneous paradigms of attitude...these are the four archetypes which had evolved little over the course of centuries. All are believed to be a result of excess or imbalance not only of life-style or personality but of physiology and other natural factors (elements, seasons &c).

_____________________________________________________________
Sanguine: Blood , Air. Jolly, Lustful. Some, such as Galen, say it is the most balanced of the humours, yet synonymous with those given to baser instincts.

__________________________________________________________

Choleric: Yellow Bile, Fire. Temper-prone, belligerent. Generally acidic in word and deed.

__________________________________________________________

Melancholic: Black Bile, Earth. The depressed condition, Saturnine in disposition. Ironically also associated with contemplation and the introspective act of negotioating logic puzzles (voir Durer's epononymous work on the subject).

__________________________________________________________
Phlegmatic: The self-same substance, Water. It it is an apathetic, lack-a-daisy and sickly state of being.

____________________________________________________________
A balance of all four, apparently, would garner a sort of Temperance...but this is a subject best left to the classical Philosophers that vaingloriously search for transmutation of All Things or the Gypsies with their enigmatic (some say prophetic, some preposterous) card-based picture-plays.

~Dain Quentin Gore

A Brief Look at "Homonculous as the Eye-Taker"

This painting is based on a small homonculous I made by accident in my early youth.

Homonculous: "A device contrived to represent a living being, usually a person. Used most often in reference to the apocryphal world of the Al Kimical Arts (That is, the arts of Al-Khim, the foreigner's name for ancient Egypt). Also, a simulacra of a human being seen in the animal or plant kingdom."


~Paraphrased from one Mr.J. Randi's Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural.

The "Homonculous" in this case is in the Eye-Taker Aspect. An arbitrary decision, based on his absence of eyes. I neglected to give this fake-person anything real but my baby teeth, inadvertently qualifying it, perhaps, for the title of true homonculous (in the classical sense). At the time, my childhood fascination lie with a film by the name of Labyrinth. So I then attempted to fashion a goblin out of clay.

The reason I later wanted to make this painting was to portray how the 4 (-1=3) Humors, (as Phlematic---sickly green--would probably be rather listless) all inventions of medical imagination, would react to a further contrivance of more overtly supernatural stature. The irony, perhaps, is that the statue I had made was much smaller in scale than it is here represented. The idea is bigger than the object, as it were...

~Dain Q. Gore

Sleep (And/As) Time-Travel.

Whereas:

During sleep (as well as other medical conditions such as the so-called coma), one undergoes a process wherein there is little if any concept of time in the real sense, but rather, a dimension by which imagination and a chaotic twist of or on all things normally tethered by reailty. When one awakens, sometimes they do not or cannot comprehend time until they are told or discover by visual means how long their travel had been. Consider the exceptional cases such as this.

Is this, then, therefore, essentially time travel? Are there any other rules by that standard, other than an arbitrary emphasis placed on eras or centuries of travel, rather than hours or minutes? Would that not be a victory for time-travel, then, however small? Perhaps it is because it is a mundane form that no one gives it consideration.

Why do so many scienficitonal narratives and portrayals assume such things in so meticulous a process as the persistence of an atemporal rift within the machine or device used to travel time? That is, why is the traveller spared from manifesting within a rock, between walls or underwater? Is such a precise calibration truly possible, even within a realm of nigh-inifinite possibilities such as that of literature?

Indeed there is also the phenomena of space-time, but it is usually assumed in many of these fictions that the traveller does not travel through space, but in fact remains stationed in an approximation of the same place that they had started in! This causes all sorts of continuity problems, such as the fact that the precision required to maintain the x, y, and z axes would certainly create an additional wrinkle...combine this calibration and one has a precision of ultraspecific magintude.

On another note...

Did not Plato, in his cave parable, realize how similar his "Shadows and Dust" synchronises with the concept of the human vision process (called simple by some), or by that token of any process that involves sensory datum? Perhaps it was simply a less scientfic and more cynical description of these selfsame processes. After all, rods and cones are nothing but a collection of light sensitive cells.

~Dain Quentin Gore

An explanation (requested or otherwise) of the painting titled "Hypgnosis"

To follow (somewhat) the theme of an antecedent article (That is, the one regarding a brief explanation of the painting whose approximate abbreviations are "G.F.S.: (being an account of)J.K.L.F.B.T.A."),

I will continue the series by making mention of a previous painting that had been completed when I was trying to find, coincidentally, a theme for what type of art on which I would like to focus.

Given this, I was also listening to various musicians; in fact, many of the selfsame performing artists who had created a clever, compelling mythology surrounding John Kane. I was also aware of a certain superstition wherein treasure could be found with a "Hand of Glory" all while putting to sleep any occupants who might be sentries entrusted with guarding said treasure. I decided to juxtapose this disembodied hand, intentionally "severed" along the picture plane, with a large blue face, perhaps the ghost released from the hand, who conducts the spell upon the hapless man sitting on the book, the treasure.

Hence, the pictorial rubric, as follows:

Book--> knowledge--> Gnosis.
Hypnos--> god of sleep.

Hypgnosis, a pun or parody of Sleeping Knowledge. That is to say, The/a sleep of Reason, which produces monsters, according to one Francisco Lucientes Goya.

~Dain Quentin Gore

On the simultaneous, yet relative, deaths of two playwrights, one Iberian (failed) and one Anglo (successful).

Interesting, perhaps, to those who would find interest in such things, that both Cervantes and Shakespeare died on the same date, but not the actual day proper:

Whereas the Gregorian calendar was in use by the Spanish (a.k.a. Those with An Invincible Armada), The English in their infinite wisdom had still persisted in the Julian calendar.

Thus, such it is that if, in fact there had been no inconsistency with translation with regards to temporal matters, there would in fact be no coincidence. This snippet, then, brings to mind questions not only of synchronicity but also of semiotics (that is to say, if one considers a calendar to be a symbolic representation of time itself).

~DQG

Mr.Kane, His Life and His Incidentals, Part The 2nd; Or, the nebulous story of the John Kane Tribute painting

The preceding is a monochromatic reproduction of an image, painted by the author upon stretched, mass-produced canvas utilising equally mass-produced linseed-oil-pigment medium.

The image proper is and was inspired by the combination of the myth and the man.

If one were to read Mr. Kane's biography (mentioned previously), one could perhaps put together clues that bind the portrait with some realities, as well as some artistic (as it were), as well as historic, liberties. Most noteworthy in this example is that John Kane The Real did not "Take up The Arts" after boxing, but after succumbing to a crippling accident. See the biography link below for specific (all true) details.

However, dear Reader-Spectateur, I must in all candor admit that the misinformed author-artist was simply inspired by the fringe romanticism and mysterty of a man who could have been a limner-itinerant portrait artist , a circus roustabout, an eccentric pseudo-scientist/mad prophet (also known in classical times as a "Philosopher"), a revolutionary museum founder, or a boxer. That he was, in all truth and reality, only some of these things makes it all the more fascinating. This combination of the real and the imagined is surely one that could survive in several subsequent artistic depictions. Accurate or not.

Fully Titled: Grandeloquent Fisticuffed Splendor; Or, The Last Fight of One Mr. John Kane before taking up the Arts.

~Dain Quentin Gore

"The best thing in the world for a young artist to do would be to hire himself out to a good painting contractor" ~John Kane, 1860-1934

After many years of wondering who the above quoted individual was; and if, in fact, Mr. Kane even existed* I have seen a vindication of sorts, a "small victory" if you will, thanks being oblidged to an article-biography regarding the real tangible man now known as John Kane.

*There has been, for quite some time, a misunderstanding with regard to his contribution to the realm of reality, one made famous by a defunct (and later succeeded by others of a similar interest) musical ensemble known for its compositional and lyrical conundrums inspired by such a fantastical philosophy as that which they had ascribed to the selfsame John Kane (replete with photos, even!), in the form of a three-step rubric (incl. a diagram) known as becoming:

a.) Charming.
b.) Bullet-Proof.
c.) Invisible.

Apparently in the prescribed numerical sequence.

However, this same man was also (or at least, rather, in the case of when dealing with the matters-at-hand known as the quotidienne reality that we know to be true) what is called in the popular parlance an "Outsider Artist."

I have therefore stumbled happenstance upon an article of great interest to few people, which means it deserves undivided attention in a forum such as this. Here, then, is the article in question; below, as follows:

Please to click upon subsequent link, so placed here.

As one may then notice from the above link, this man also is a number, according to the museum that holds some of his works and by no coincidence, this very rare biography.

~Dain Quentin Gore.

Noteworthy Quaintitudes in the History of Medicine, with an opening unrelated, yet presicent, fact with regard to the Histories Militant as well.

During the Crusades, Odo of Bayeux, a cleric, preferred the use of blunt objects so as to avoid the dreaded blood-letting.

And This, from Asimov's Book of Facts:

"The Fourth Lateran council, in 1215, forbade clerics in holy orders to include surgery in their practice of medicine so they would not spill blood. Surgery was left to men who were neither scholars nor gentlemen. A distinction grew between physicians, who were members of a learned profession, and surgeons, who practiced a menial trade, often doubling as barbers or dentists."

Would that the Reader forgive potential impudence, but there is a conclusion the Author has made (with regard to the above excerpt) in the form of a Rubric, thusly:

Words (Men-of-Letters & Philosophers) ::Deeds (Commoners & Vagabonds)

And again, allow the Author to quote a defunct and long-forgotten group of futurist-cynic-satirist-minded, silvery faux appliance-bedecked automaton impersonators/troubadours:

"It takes action to act."

Incidentally, the word for "quack" (orig. quack-salver) in Spanish is sacamuelas, "tooth-puller/yanker."

The medieval barbers would affix bloody handkerchiefs to poles, implying experience in the now-infamous practice of blood-letting.

As for the subject of The Four Humours, now that is a matter for another day; or several, as it were.

~Dain Q. Gore