Drawings from the Wildman Life drawing Class part 2

Completion of the Wildman Life Drawing Class

Behind the scenes of the Wildman Life Drawing Class

Paul Thek's 96 Sacraments - Praise the Lord.

A Paul Thek Journal.

I visited the Paul Thek journal show in Glasgow a few months ago and came across his 96 Sacraments.He celebrated everything, the small, the everyday.He celebrated the present.

96 Sacraments 

1. To wake up Praise the Lord

2. To breathe Praise the Lord.

3. To touch the earth Praise the Lord

4. To pee, Praise the Lord

To make a fire Praise the Lord

5.To wash,to comb your hair, Praise the Lord.

6. To prepare breakfast, Praise the Lord.

To squeeze a Lemon, Praise the Lord

7. To eat breakfast Praise the Lord

8. To do the dishes Praise the Lord.

9.  To clean up, Praise the Lord

10. To write a letter, Praise the Lord.

11. To mail a letter, Praise the Lord.

12. To go out, Praise the Lord

13. To see the sun Praise the Lord

14. To do the shopping Praise the Lord

15. To talk with some people, Praise the Lord.

16. To buy the paper, Praise the Lord

17. To come home Praise the Lord.

18. To go to work Praise the Lord

19. To work Praise the Lord.

20. To have lunch, Praise the Lord

21. To work in the afternoon, Praise the Lord.

22, To notice the light changing Praise the Lord.

23. To see a cat Praise the Lord.

24. To see a dog , Praise the Lord.

25. To stop for a rest Praise the Lord.

26. To go home for dinner, sing Praises

27. To talk with neighbours, sing praises

28. To talk with a neighbours child, sing praises.

29. To kiss somone, sing praises.

30. To eat dinner, sing praises

31. To eat dinner with friends, sing praises

32. To eat dinner with children, sing praises

33. To eat dinner alone, sing praises

34. To have dinner with someone, sing praises.

35. To think of love, Praise the Lord.

36. To think of hope, Praise the Lord.

37. To think, praise the Lord.

38. To dream, sing praises.

More to follow ....


 The Whitney Museum of American Art says. . .


 Paul Thek’s “96 Sacraments” were written in one of his notebooks (#75, 1975). Thek wrote in a journal daily in the 1970s and 80s. Upon his death he had filled almost 100 journals, most of which were black and white composition books.

In the catalogue for Paul Thek: Diver, A Retrospective, Tina Kukielski writes: “Like most journals, they reveal deeply personal thoughts about friends, relationships, and sex, as well as Thek’s private shames and insecurities, and his efforts—like prayers—to be better in every way, especially as an artist.”

New Artist Book - Cosmic Forces

Cosmic Forces.

‘As Shakespeare said, you can call spirits from the vastly deep, but will they answer?’

Mr. Franklin. Hound of the Baskervilles. 20^th Century Fox 1939

Stephen Fowler explores his fascination with American B movies of the 1930’s & 40’s fascination with Spiritualism, séances and Mediums in his latest Artist Book, Cosmic Forces.

Throughout the period these cheap and quickly made films often employed the paranormal in highly effective ends, creating scary and haunting atmospheres to chill the cinema audience.

Introducing and utilizing the props of Spiritualism such as darkened rooms, ouija boards, floating spirit hands and voices and ectoplasm was an economical means to convey the strange and ‘other’. Another was exploiting the suspicion of the outsider in casting brilliant Eastern European and Asian character actors as Spirit Mediums. Scriptwriters drafted eerie, eccentric and sometimes profound lines and for these actors to speak,

‘those beyond, they know, they told me death would come among us’

  

Mrs. Walters. Charlie Chan’s Murder Cruise, 20^th Century Fox 1940

Fowler will continue his exploration of hand cut rubber stamp printing technologies and homemade ink pads in the making of Cosmic Forces.

 

I made this book by printing a selection of my hand cut rubber stamps.

I stretched the paper and painted it with some very old antique red drawing ink, then I printed/stamped with thick strong bleach, oil and water based ink.

Cosmic Forces will be on show at LXV Books, 65 Roman Road, London E2 6ET from Wednesday 4 July until Tuesday 12th September. The exhibition forms part of a series of shows called Shelve Project curated by Amber Ablett. 

http://www.amberablett.com

For bookshop opening times call 020 8983 2087

The Wildman

' Huge and hairy and mute. . .he may be so large that his legs alone have the sizes of tress. His temper when aroused is terrible and his first impulse that of tearing trespasses to pieces. When moved to revenge, he nay make lakes disappear and towns sink to the ground. He devours human beings, preferring unbaptised children, and - according to a belief held in Italian Tyrol and in the Grisons in Switzerland- makes a practice of exchanging his own worthless progeny for human offspring'

Richard Bernheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages.

15th century manuscript illustration of Nebuchanezzar, the Babylonian king from the Old Testament Book of Daniel,
'During that time he lived away from others, eating grass for food and letting his hair and nails grow wild. In the the Middle Ages some mad persons were allowed to go free, and they usually drifted to the woods in order to live unmolested.'

Daniel Farson, Vampires, Zombies & Monster Men




 

 Three students and a card board reconstruction of the huge figure that pursued them from their campsite, loping along after their pickup truck in Angles National Forest, Southern Californa, 1973.



We feed on wild fruit and roots, drink the clear water of springs and warm ourselves by the light of the sun.Our garment is the mossy foliage and grass which serve also as our bed and bedspreads . . .company and pleasure we find in the wild animals of the woods, for since we do them no harm, they let us live in peace. . .We exult in brotherly love and have never had any strife among us, for each does to the other as he would want him to do to himself'

The Lament of the Wild Man about the Unfaithful World

Now, as lightening pitchforked in dark pastures of sky
above the remote Bluff Creek wilderness,
dwindling sanctum of strange man-ape beings,
I felt a kinship with those lost hearts beating hugley against the fall of time.


And as night gathered in the long canyons
I took the headlamp which would light me down
and signaled out across the miles; so, linked
at least in ceremony, Bigfoot and I moved 
in separate sorrows along our evenings trails.


As published in the Mountain Gazette, July 1975.

A 17th century engraving of a Wildman discovered in Java.

Drawing the Wildman

These are some of the drawings created during the first Wildman life drawing class.

It took part on 20th October at the Horse Hospital in Bloomsbury and it was one of the events curated for the Artist Ronny Long's show 'My  Life on Earth 1991 - 2002.'

Ronny and Bigfoot: Although Bigfoot was initially a source of fear for Long (as a child he would frequently obsess over Bigfoot roaming around his neighbourhood or finding his way into the family home), the creature has fueled much of his work. From childhood doodles and drawings of Sasquatch through to his most recent cycle of Bigfoot paintings, the idea of a human-like creature existing somewhere outside of society, unknown, unseen and untamed, has proved integral to Long’s vision.