Dave McKean’s Persistence of Vision – Merry Karnowsky Gallery – Los Angeles, CA

Win and I attended Dave McKean’s show, Persistence of Vision at the Merry Karnowsky Gallery in Los Angeles this evening.

It was a stunning show.

Dave had for display stunning sketches, paintings, mixed media work and digital photographs.

Where to even begin? How about the entrance?

When we entered the space, he had ten stunning sketches of Argentine Tango dancers. Of course, you know how Win and I felt about that. 🙂 They were sketches in various poses. He used ink and wash and an overlay of letters. They were beautiful and dynamic illustrations with lovely use of lines. <3 These are from a collection titled “Postcard from Buenos Aires.


Win’s favorite is above. Mine is below.

A few more works on display…

We both loved this chess piece he created:

These mix media works consisted of paper scraps, leaves, and acrylic. It was positively gritty with so much texture. It’s such a pleasure to see McKean’s work up close. These come from a collection called “Nitrate”. Seeing this photograph truly doesn’t give you the essence of the piece. To see the overlapping papers and his treatment of the paint — it really enhances emotion of the work. Please visit if you can!

And the last section of works consisted of his digital photographic works from his “The Particle Tarot: The Major Arcana & The Minor Arcana.” Very popular works which are viewable from different sources on the web.

Win and I got to meet Mr. McKean and I got my copy of Coraline signed. Win got his Arkham Asylum signed. 🙂
And of course, a photo op:

Dave was a sweet fellow with a charming English accent. (Of course. lol!) He was so easy to have a conversation with. 🙂 When we shared our love for tango, he pleasantly told us that he and his wife were also learning the dance, too!

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!!!

Being part of the ASFA crowd, they also had the Kent Williams Special Edition Amalgram book for sale. I’ve had my eye on this edition for a while and there it was, in its slip covered glory over the counter. 😮 I asked to take a look at it and found that it also came with a lithograph! (Yes, please!)

So, I bought it. <3333 (And there goes my budget for Comic Con. Though, this was the ONE thing I wanted to buy there anyway.)

Though Win and I disagree greatly on his style of work (another entry for another day) I’m on Cloud Nine by having added this book to my library. His paintings are so emotive, disturbing and I love his figurative work. <3 Very Egon Schiele (of course) and that's just up my alley. Anyway... So, the lady is handing me back my card back and she goes, "He's here, you know." And she flips a finger around the room. I think my eyes bugged out and I started sending my Leen radar around the room. I had only seen Kent one other time last year so I had a vague image of him in my mind. ^^; We went peering around, ran into one of Kent Williams students, talked about him and then we got to meet him. 🙂 We even met one his frequently used models, a girl named Mari. Apparently, she was also one of Win's classmates at Associates in Arts back when that school was still around. :/ (Yeah, I feel like the amateur in a group of amazing people. Anyway...) So, we chatted, learned that Kent Williams teaches at Art Center during the daytime classes and I left re-contemplating furthering my education.

He looks less than thrilled.

Maybe I might sound like a hypocrite, but I hate photographing paintings & artwork like this. It doesn’t do his work justice, but at least one can’t go off making prints from it. (I knew assholes who would do that!) Anyway, I only wish to share and spread the magic of Dave McKean’s work. The show is running until August 19th. So, if you’re in the area, it’s well worth a viewing! Please click here for more information!

About the author

Comments

Comments are closed.

error: Content is protected !!