Friday, September 07, 2007

New Painting: Looking back On Your First Desktop Theme It Smelled Like A Child's Potty



"He was a medical tinker and no longer wore his half face in the fishbowl light of the amphitheater. He put his hands to the hot stove. If there was one last operation to perform, he thought, what would it be, since he had spread anatomy across a table like a net and crumpled a pair of deflated lungs into a ball. There was none he knew. If a single body could bear all marks of his blade and if it carried only the organs of his dissection, his life work would seesaw across the floor under tresses of arms and ventricles hung from the shoulders, would turn the other emasculated cheek. Slowly he rolled his sleeves and reaching around the stove dropped celluloid cuffs on the bunk tumbled with newspapers and a khaki blanket"

From: "The Beetle Leg" by John Hawkes NDP239, 1951.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Oh my God Wil those lumps look diseased.

Wil Murray said...

Indeedm but they are the only thing saving the painting from terminal slickness:
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1048/1354934173_7ae8fe1ec4.jpg?v=0

Anonymous said...

Slickness? This is the first time I've seen a large reflective surface in one of your paintings... (but I'm probably wrong?)

There is nothing slicker than a mirror. It reflects like water but won't ripple. Or like a scalpel.

Wil Murray said...

Okay, your have to tell me where the mirror is.
PS. There is no mirror.

Anonymous said...

Oh gosh, I meant the middle part looks reflective... Also what appears to be some sort of foil under that looks like a reflective surface, a strip of orange 'perspective' stripes over top of that... Reflective surfaces, but no, not mirrors.

Only meant to say that despite livid tumors, maybe there is still a chance for this patient.

Wil Murray said...

I've included the image of the full painting in the post.
Make no mistake, I adore his painting. While it most certainly smacks of the Den for Men style of design that gets tossed around by 4th year male art students as painting when seen in photograph, the painting itself is gloriously disgusting and ill-crafted(a criticism in the visitor's book at my Toronto show).
No new reflective surfaces necessarily, just the usual gloss.
Have you not yet seen my work in person beyond the large painting in Jesse's house?

Anonymous said...

Nope, but I hope too! Maybe next month. Something about an abandoned hospital in October that speaks to me... Deeply.

Wil Murray said...

I got the room to put you up if you got the hankering to come.
We can kill rats and get drunk.