Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Monday, December 3, 2007
Ghost in the Snow - SOLD!
Ghost in the Snow - probably my favorite painting of the moment. Large painting (24" x 34") unframed, acrylics on paper.
Eve Wall Hanging $250 (£125)
Huge Wall Hanging - Acrylics, pastels, pen-and-ink on paper - 3' x 4.5 '
The sketch gives an idea of the image itself; the colour details show the colours of the large original.
Saint Wiggle $250 (£125)
It's a large painting (25" x 27") on paper and cardboard using beads, glitter, acrylics and pen-and-ink. Saint Wiggle is framed with a homemade wooden picture frame, which also has been painted on. The story to this painting is told on the painting itself. Painted 2007.
The Gunny Wolf $500 (£250)
24" x 34" unframed. Watercolours, acrylics and pen on heavy watercolour board.
“Volcano, Change(nie)ling” $250 (£125)
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“Volcano, Change(nie)ling”
16" x 20" Mixed media on cardboard, framed without glass.
“Tattooed Honey” $250 (£125)
“Tattooed Honey”, tattooed woman with bee stings on dock. 16" x 20" framed.
Saint Wilgefortis $250 (£125)
Saint Wilgefortis: An Eclipse Turns Above a Female Citizen of Nature’s Own DragKingdom, Also Called Uncumber. 11" x 24" unframed.
“Chumanpanzee” $500 (£250)
“Chumanpanzee Considers All 5 Sides of the Question at the Giant's Causeway”
The HYBRID VIGOUR Series, Mixed Media on Paper & Canvas Board. 24" x 34" She's a thoughtful hybrid between homo sapiens sapiens and pan paniscus, isolated on a famous pentagonal rock structure in Northern Ireland. Humans are more closely related to pygmy chimpanzees than a horse is to a donkey (we have 98% genetic compatibility). This means that there's a fair chance not only of offspring, but also that any offspring would be fertile - unlike the sterile mule. Would we exploit animals if we admitted that they are us? This hybrid has human tits (as does the sun that shines down on it). Mammaries are often considered taboo in photographic depictions of the human animal. They look too animal. Genitalia is often played down in photographic depictions of chimpanzees and gorillas. It looks too human. That's part of what the chumanpanzee is thinking about. Her other four thoughts are private.
“Anorexic Werewolf (Hunger) Strikes Again, The” $500 (£125)
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“Anorexic Werewolf (Hunger) Strikes Again, The”
The HYBRID VIGOUR Series Mixed Media on Cardboard. 24" x 34". Toilet tissue drenched in glue. Turkey. Apple. Becks beer. Pepsi. One fat beady orange. I thought you said I / worse than / ought to have a cosmicstring around my ring / thinking of choking on a / finger and on my own tongue. My dear beloved ventriloquist, O fiancée you reached forth and – I admit it – dragged those / I sat there in my cosmic veil and tried it / dead ringers back fingers I do thee wed gagged a couple times before I remembered with a string around my finger I was an idiot, disgusting / I thought I'd court far more than you. A ring – I choke upon my fingers – a fellow – my food comes up to be swallowed 2wice – a ring-bearer. I planned my ceremony 2 be double ring heading 2rds double trouble dead ringer 2 the deceased. Now who's the stupid doppelganger best man? one it's not me two throwing the bouquet to the side to catch it catch it cosmic ringer-ringer-ringer three catch it on my swallowed finger.
“Rapture: Souls & Spunk Ascend to Heaven” $250 (£125)
“Rapture: Souls & Spunk Ascend to Heaven”
Spray paint, gold leaf, acrylics, pen & ink on cardboard. 24" x 34", Top of church. Sky above church. Left-hand side of sun. Ultimate meltdown of the sacred and profane, floating up to HEAVEN at the end of the world.
Gorgon Tears Out The Hyperbled Heart $500 (£250)
Gorgon Tears Out The Hyperbled Heart. 24" x 34", framed under glass.
“Come. Here. (The Ovaries of a Siren)" $500 (£250)
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“Come. Here. (The Ovaries of a Siren)"
30" x 40", unframed.
“Transsexual by Choice" $125 (£63)
“Transsexual by Choice, and also by Bengal Quince/Goldfinger Banana Tree” (glows in the dark)
10" x 10"
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Hybrid Vigour, Alaska - ALL SOLD!
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“Licking the Alaska State Highway: Transvestite, Autumn” The HYBRID VIGOUR Series, Pen & Ink and Acrylics on Paper. 8½" x 11", This painting is part of a seasonal set (Alaskan Hybrid Vigour – Summer, Spring, Winter, Autumn) within a larger series – HYBRID VIGOUR.
“Someone Has Left Australopithecus Boisei Behind in the Woods: Nutcracker Man, Winter"
“Captain Michael Healy, of Mixed Race Heritage, Observes with Pleasure the Melting Ice on Some Future Alaskan Beach Year 2005: 1891 Polar Explorer, Spring”
“Summer Bleeding It Happened So Fast: Jesus, Phoenix, Summer”,
“Dolly the Electric Sheep (Ogmore by Sea)” $200 (£100)
“Dolly the Electric Sheep (Ogmore by Sea)” Watercolours, Acrylics, Coloured Glue, Fabric, Pen & Ink on Posterboard. 8½" x 12"
The first incarnation: I was 13 and had just returned from a short trip to Wales when my parents took my brother and I on a month-long trip to Europe. We ran for our Heathrow plane back to Anchorage; we missed it, and so we went to Wales during the three-day wait for the next Alaskan-bound flight (British Airways still had direct flights to Alaska in those days; Prince William was born when we were mid-air and they offered free champagne to all legal adults). I was very impressed by Welsh Nationalism and by Ogmore-by-Sea in particular, where my brother and I went exploring in caves and ruins and found something that looked like a dragon's egg. The site was haunted by a Blue Lady, a type of ghost. I painted this on my return in commemoration for some local children's painting group. I specifically remember trying to put a real silver lining in the cloud. Then I redid the painting during a nightmarish trip down the Alcan highway with my best friend, the second worst month of my life so far. My boyfriend and I had split, badly; my friend and I were squabbling, badly; I was coughing up blood from a cat allergy, badly. Throughout this trip I drew whirly designs in coloured ink on my old painting. Sometimes when I look at my paintings, I can remember every emotion I felt at the time that I sketched, and this is one of them. As I occasionally paint as a method of sorting through my thoughts and opinions, my associations with my paintings are not always happy and often ambivalent. I added a highly decorated frame (with little black sheep saying "one for my master, one for my dame") in 1997 and renamed this Dolly the Electric Sheep to be topical (a comment on the appropriation of bodies human and animal for scientific research), but I later removed the frame and kept the name. The frame was hideous yellow-green and I burnt it in a bonfire one year.
“Sheela-na-gig” $600 (£300)
“Sheela-na-gig” The BITCH Series Mixed Media on Cardboard. 30" x 48" Framed under glass.
Mouth. Teeth. Eye. Dream of an infected eye swarming with yellow globules that I couldn't pick off like that old Plath poem. 14th-century carvings on ancient Celtic churches/monuments, which showed female gargoyles holding open their genitalia. Unclear whether these were an admonition against feminine lust or a show of brazen grrl power. Far more likely to be the former. Sheila is a hell of a bitch.
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The Exorcism of Anne Boleyn $200 (£100)
“Exorcism of That 3-breasted, 6-fingered Witch Anne Boleyn, The (II)” [juvenilia – of sorts 1987, 1989, 1997 / The BITCH Series, pen & ink and acrylic paint on paper and board 16" x 20" FRAMED
This painting has been many things: first a scene from Moliere's play Tartuffe done as a high school French project for extra-credit because my grades were low that term; then repainted for a Halloween exhibition on exorcism at the University of Alaska two and a half years later (for which it wasn't accepted, damn it) as the exorcism of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII, who was accused of being a witch and rumoured to have had six fingers on one hand and three nipples. If you look closely here, you can see a second cleavage and that sixth digit. The red fuzz above the characters' heads is magic, as Anne works her own reverse exorcism with a hidden book, bell and candle, and begins to reveal her weapons. Then I moved to Seattle and traded the painting, originally rather large, away to my friend Karen's boyfriend in exchange for a hat I never received. Paul, the friend's boyfriend, a very talented and sweet fantasy milliner, was extremely fond of it for reasons that were always a little cloudy, perhaps it was the male character's elaborate plume-feathered hat. Then Karen and Paul broke up and, hatless, I lost track of Paul as I moved to Europe. All I had left was part of a colour copy I'd once had done. I repainted on the colour copy, with some vague idea of depicting the stereotyping in Disney cartoon feature films – "Disney goes wrong" – but I left most of it as it was and just patched up the faded bits where the colour copy had been torn, and changed the background colour. Its truest incarnation and, I believe, its heart, is its second life as the maligned but still rebellious Anne Boleyn.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Girl on a Stick
(image still from The Wonderful Thing)
In other news, I got this today!
"Hi Kathleen - hope you're well. I've been inspired by GoaS - on the rare occasions I'm in london I've started scribbling my ire in Metro &c. In fact - i've been scribbling "GIRL ON A STICK!" over pictures of vacant, pouting "babes". MAkes me feel better and hope this generates some buzz too - can you get your other London mates to do the same?
Big love
Em x
Serious site: | http://www.uclmail.net/users/e.byrne
Silly site:D http://emmalouise99.blogspot.com"
I couldn't ask for any better tribute. I think Clementine would be proud.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
The Date.
I feel strangely numbed to September 11th. Everything my country has done since has been a spit in the face to those who love life, including all those who deplore the murders that occured on September 11th.
The murders of September 11th were wrong.
The resultant two invasions by the U.S. and murdering of 700,000+ Iraqi civilians was and is wrong.
The Patriot Act and tearing apart of the U.S. Consitution was and is wrong.
Extraordinary rendition and Guantanomo Bay detainments were and are wrong.
The horrific events of September 11th marked the start of a terrible period in the history of the U.S. and the rest of the world, indeed.
The murders of September 11th were wrong.
The resultant two invasions by the U.S. and murdering of 700,000+ Iraqi civilians was and is wrong.
The Patriot Act and tearing apart of the U.S. Consitution was and is wrong.
Extraordinary rendition and Guantanomo Bay detainments were and are wrong.
The horrific events of September 11th marked the start of a terrible period in the history of the U.S. and the rest of the world, indeed.
Saturday, September 8, 2007
I want this.
My maternal grandfather, Gerald Desmond, died four years before I was born, but his legacy lived on through his collection of Charles Addams cartoon books that lived in my grandparents' study. All three of my siblings and all ten of my first cousins on that side of the family (and I) spent many Christmas and Thanksgiving hours visiting Grandma and delighting in the pitch-dark humor of Mr. Addams. All fourteen of us grandchildren have a taste in humor that could be described gently as "dry" and less gently as "sick", though it probably evens out to "reasonably dark". My grandpa also had several photographic books of so-called "freaks", so at an early age I enjoyed looking at pictures of bearded ladies, real-life wolfmen, conjoined twins and women with three legs (a particular favorite, and even now I am not certain why). One of my cousins has a huge tattoo of the Addams family house on her leg, and was featured on one of those Wacky Weddings programs when she got married in a rather gothic ceremony. The Charles Addams cartoons, though, are always relentlessly cheerful in a way. It's gallows humor, but it's damn happy gallows humor. Reading Charles Addams cartoons always cheers me up the same way reading Douglas Adams (whoa! I didn't notice that until now, typing!) books always cheers me up.
I recently wrote a short story about that room where the Addams cartoon books were to be found and about living with my grandmother one spring and summer when I was 23 and she was recovering from a head injury (she had fallen off a ladder). My grandma died nearly two years ago, and her house was recently sold. She had one of the most beautiful persimmon trees in her garden, but it was chopped down for some reason by the new buyers. She was quite an amazing woman - an atheist (or "heathen", as she put it) who raised five children as Catholics, a librarian, a woman who studied law at Stanford way back in the 1930s, a woman of extremely sharp wit and tongue, someone who loved life, someone you'd always want at your dinner parties, but were always a little bit afraid of. She would come visit us up in Alaska and tell my mom that we four kids were getting spoiled (which would make us (the kids) seethe), and that we weren't using our "ly"-endings properly with our adverbs, a slur my mother found worse. Grandma was probably right, but at least I wrote "properly" in the sentence preceding this one. That's hardly Grandma's only legacy, and I doubt that the dark sense of humor was my grandfather's only bequest; it was only the most tangible one. We knew he had touched those glossy pages and chuckled too. I think that made us laugh louder, to prove something to him, our invisible dead grandfather, and to us, who wanted to know him better.
Here is a bridge named after my grandfather. You can follow it to the ultimate in 1950s glamor ships, the Queen Mary.
P.S. I just read that Ewan McGregor ran over the bridge in the film The Island and I think that's pretty damn cool, mainly because Ewan is pretty damn cute.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
It was a Cool, Cool Summer
One day a skywriter flew past our house. We were sitting on the porch drinking beer and cava with our friend Stacy. I had to lie on my back to get this shot, but it was worth it.
The tall and beautiful Emma and Simone in the long grass of the sand dunes.
David and Simone appearing *very* excited about the cheese samples at the Tillamook cheese factory. (Photo courtesy of Emma Byrne)
Making drip castles the traditional Desmond way, a skill passed down to me by my mother. (Photo courtesy of Emma Byrne)
A squirrel captured on weird trunk limbs whilst we were camping.
Megan's son T goes on a treasure hunt while camping.
The female pirates of yore, post-treasure hunt. Yo-ho-ho!
20-million-year-old fossils at Beverly Beach.
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