There wasn’t anyone artistic in Dale Grimshaw’s family, it was just something to do, and learn along the way. That he had a natural talent was obvious, but he developed it through a difficult and potentially violent childhood – the experience of which informs many of his paintings.

Indeed, it was this kind of emotional power in one of his paintings (a self-portrait) that brought me to his brilliant, visceral and original work. His portrait may have seemed imperious, but his eyes revealed a vulnerability, a tremendous humanity and soul.

Originally a street artist, Dale Grimshaw is now one of Britain’s most exciting and talented young artists, and last year, his one-man show Moreish was a hit with both public and critics. I contacted Dale to ask him more about his life, his work and how he started out.

Paul Gallagher: What was the first turning point in your career as an artist?

Dale Grimshaw: Probably getting in at Middlesex University, formerly Hornsey College of Art. It meant I had to really consider the moves I was making in life. I had no support from anywhere else; just my rented flat, my belongings and myself. It meant I’d have to sell it all and move from Lancashire. It was a springboard to other things and places.

Paul Gallagher: Tell me about your childhood and first artistic ambitions?

Dale Grimshaw: There wasn’t anyone artistic, in the literal sense, in my family. I just naturally continued drawing and painting long after other kids had normally given up all that creative nonsense outside of school.

At secondary school, there wasn’t anyone that took any notice of my abilities. Little did my art teacher know that I was practicing to paint with oil paints I’d nicked from shops at home. Ironically, she was called Mrs. Oil but she would rather hit you than take any real interest. My mom saw I had talent and did her best to encourage me.

I first saw ‘The Stranglers’ written in huge letters on a bus stop wall in the late 70s. I was hooked and fascinated by the idea and mystery of graffiti. I wrote on walls, playgrounds, bus seats, textbook covers, and my own body even. Sadly at the age of 15 I tattooed my own arm with my ‘tag,’ which is still there today, as bold as ever. I hated it for decades… bad karma, anyone?’
 

 
See more of Dale Grimshaw’s work here.

All artworks copyright to Dale Grimshaw
 

 
Full interview with Dale Grimshaw, after the jump…
 

Ray Charles
 
Joe Barber of San Antonio, Texas is a regular Leonardo da Vinci when it comes to creating art with a pair of Wahl clippers, some dye and eye liner. Unlike da Vinci though, Joe uses no paint.

Check out some of his work on his YouTube channel. Better than velvet paintings.
 

 
Does it not fill your heart with patriotic pride ?
 

 
Thanks to Richard Devine !

 
I doubt these displays ever convinced any kids to abstain from drugs (come on, who just walks around with a poppy?), but they’re sort of beautiful in a Joseph Cornell meets Hunter S. Thomspon kind of way. I’d put one on my wall, anyways.
 

 
More photos after the jump…
 

 
Another Green World, a 2010 Arena episode profiles musician/polymath intellectual Brian Eno. He’s seen in the studio, talking about Roxy Music, working with David Bowie and U2, and conversing with friends like Richard Dawkins, Malcolm Gladwell, journalist Paul Morley and record producer Steve Lillywhite about science, art, and making things.

The title track of Eno’s 1975 album Another Green World has been used for the famous Arena title sequence since the program debuted that same year.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Brian Eno Frisbee vs. Bryan Ferry Kite
 

 
As I have posted about here recently, there’s an exhibition at Kent Fine Art in New York of the work made by artist/inventor/architect Paul Laffoley during his residence at The Boston Visionary Cell, his enigmatic one-man, one-room think tank on the second floor of a staid Boston office building (He was evicted a few years ago when the landlord discovered that he been living there).

The show is up through March and I’ve heard from everyone I know who has seen it, that it’s an absolute stunner, a “must see.” If you’re going to be in the NYC area in the next few months, it’ll be worth the pilgrimage to Chelsea, I can assure you. Ken Johnson at The New York Times called it “an excellent introduction to one of the most unusual creative minds of our time.”

I’ve been to The Boston Visionary Cell and it was certainly one of the most eccentric dwellings I have every experienced. Obviously the home of a genius living in modest circumstances, the tiny space had neither windows, a kitchen, bathroom or anything more, really, than a sink and yet for decades, some of the most extraordinary artwork of our time was produced there.

Aside from several works in progress, some large easels and a drafting table, there were LOTS OF BOOKS, thousands upon thousands of them on every subject under the sun in stacks that were up to 5 feet tall. It was not easy getting a small TV crew into the room without knocking anything over, although we more or less managed. During a lull in the taping, I mentioned to Paul how I’d recently been trying to find a copy of Timothy Leary’s rare book Terra II without success, and he went right over to the stacks and plucked the book from near the bottom of one with the dexterity of a kung fu master, disturbing nothing.

In the clip below, from my 2000-2001 British TV series, Disinformation, you can actually see a little bit of the tiny, crowded, one room space where Paul Laffoley not only worked, but slept, for decades, his head down at his desk ala “Howard Roarke” in The Fountainhead. The reason you don’t see even more is that we had a shot with a depth of about 4 feet, I was practically sitting on Paul’s lap for the interview.

There is an extensive online catalog of The Boston Visionary Cell exhibit in PDF format that you can download here. You can also buy posters of Paul Laffoley’s work, including the image above (“Thanaton III, not in the NYC, but will be in the London show at the Hayworth Gallery later in the year) at the Kent Fine Art website.

KENT FINE ART, 210 Eleventh Avenue, Second Floor, NYC (212) 365-9500

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Paul Laffoley: Ambitious retrospective of visionary artist opens tomorrow night in NYC
 

 
Artist Pat Keck is a massive Klaus Nomi fan. So much so that she built a life-size wooden Klaus Nomi doll which rests on top of a sarcophagus with lyrics from “The Cold Song” written around the edge.

Apparently Klaus comes equipped with hydraulics, for when you step on the attached pedal, he rises up and his head comes forward with arms moving.
 

 

Below, an absolutely stunning performance of “Cold Song”:

 
It’s about time someone made use of all that frozen cow caca laying around in Siberia (right ?).

According to the artist Mikhail Bopposov via RIA Novosti:

I made it so the kids could play around and have some fun.

When asked about his artistic aspirations:

This is not sculpture, just a piece of work I did.

Come Spring, the dung cobra will be dismantled and used as fertilizer.
 

 
Via Nerdcore

Kahlo with husband, Diego Rivera
 
Unfortunately though, not anywhere near me.

Frida Kahlo’s clothes were recently curated at her home (now a museum) in Mexico City. While Frida’s traditional dresses, which defied the modern European fashions of the time, are the obvious draw, it would be just as fascinating to see the elements of her wardrobe that functioned as a part of her disability.

The artist’s ornately decorated prosthetic leg will be on display, though I believe her beautifully-painted torso casts are in separate collections.
 

Plaster Corset With A Hammer And Sickle (An Unborn Baby)
 

 
Artist Sig Waller has been very busy with 2 excellent new projects, Shadow Play and Happy Homes, both of which will form part of a new exhibition to be held later this month.

Sig’s latest work has been inspired by a 1950s book called “Happy Homes”, which is described on its frontispiece as “an indispensable guide to housewives and home lovers everywhere.”

Sig has sabotaged the book’s illustrations creating a humorous and pointed critique of the prescribed roles for women within the home. Shadow Play presents an unsettling cartoon figure manipulating a 1950’s housewife (excitedly frothing at the mouth with toothpaste?) through a series of household chores. While Happy Homes is bleaker and more critically of the enforced relationships between women and home, where objects objects and electrical goods take on a controlling, religious, almost sexual and menacing quality, with the figures isolated in darkened voids on blood soaked floors. The images are like stills from a David Lynch movie, but far more potent and disturbing, each creating their own narrative that leaves the viewer unsettled.

Shadow Play will form part of an exhibition called Happy Homes, which will feature work by Sig Waller and Chris Shaw Hughes. Here’s the blurb:

Family life tends to be portrayed as blissful, idyllic and safe, but reality often tells a different story.

In this show, Hughes and Waller explore the dark circumference of the family circle, exposing the crumbling façade and the unseen stories behind the saccharine smiles that stare out at us from family albums or media and advertising photography. What lies beneath this apparent perfection?

‘Happy Homes’ explores these boundaries, the everyday secrets that families seek to contain and withhold. Found imagery is given new meaning, reality is warped and altered – or is it?

They say “the camera never lies”, but the power of the photographed image lies in its ability to conceal or to contain both truth and falsehood. On closer inspection, the ordinary almost always becomes extraordinary.

Happy Homes opens on January 25th-February 17th, 2013, at Krefeld, 35 Blumen eV - Blumenstrasse 35 47799 Krefeld. More details here.

Shadow Play and Happy Homes on the Sig Waller site and on Facebook and Tumblr.
 

 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Beautiful Fevered Dreams: The Art of Sig Waller

Sig Waller: ‘Our capacity for cruelty and suffering is timeless, as is our ability to look away’

 
More of Sig Waller’s ‘Happy Homes’, after the jump….