Quiet on yo' ass

Recently I've been pretty silent on this blog o' mine, mostly because I've been lazy, but also because I've had little to say in relation to the things I've been posting; I'm neither qualified or capable of saying anything useful about these paintings, so I thought it better to let them speak for themselves.

I've been really interested in painting recently, which has been filtering into my dreams a lot; dreams about helter skelters set against fluorescent pink backdrops, extensive walks around art galleries, both as myself and as Sherlock Holmes, accompanied by Heather and Watson, respectively.

Here's some work by William Eggleston, about whom Heather and I watched a programme recently, presented by Alan Yentob, called Imagine:

Morton, Mississippi (1969-70):



Huntsville, Alabama (1971):



Untitled (1984):



Apart from anything else, it strikes me that the first two images, and much of Eggleston's work, seems to have been infuential on on the films of David Lynch; this was pointed out in the programme of course, so I probably had some help in making this amazing leap of reference. Regardless, they both have the same kind of facade of normality with an undercurrent of evil and loneliness that you would find in a film like Blue Velvet, with a similar subject matter of the American lower middle class. The first image is obviously more threatening than the second, which just seems very empty and sad.

The last picture is just odd; everything about it suggests a church or shrine to Elvis, and I think Kennedy, whose face I believe is in the American flag on the dresser. Obviously the owner of the house misses the 60s a great deal. In fact, I think it might have been taken inside Graceland, which would probably explain it.

Roy Orbison - In Dreams.