The Savage Hills | Dan Beard | The Assembly Rooms
April 16, 2013
The Savage Hills
Dan Beard
Private View Thursday 2 May 6-8.30pm
Assembly Rooms Gallery open 3 May –26 May
Monday to Friday 9 – 6 (By appointment at weekend)
Assembly Rooms Gallery, 8 Silver Place, London W1F OJU
Tube: Oxford Circus, Piccadilly Circus or Tottenham Court Road
Escape from Devil’s Canyon 2013 33 x 25.5cm Oil on panel
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Tasty Modern at Schwartz Gallery
February 17, 2013
Tasty Modern
Exhibition dates:
Friday 15th February – Friday 9th March, 2013
Opening hours:
Thursday – Friday & Saturday 12 – 5 p.m
First Thursdays late opening:
Thursday 7th March, 6 – 9 p.m
Schwartz Gallery, 92 White Post Lane
Ground floor, Building 2
London, E9 5EN
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Incarnadine Video
August 02, 2012
This is a video that I was asked to work on as Art Department. Part of my role was to come up with the methods of dispersing and blowing the various particles (feathers, origami, petals,glitter etc.) over and around the models. It was a fun shoot and the models were great sports because although the playback is super slow motion (a Phantom high speed camera was used to video) and the action is very gentle they were actually being blasted over and over with the materials we were using.
The job appealed to me because of the link it has with my painting in terms of the idea and image of figures being surrounded by moving particles and colour. Although in my art I prefer the particles to be bubbling and floating away from the bodies themseves.
Click this link to watch the video: Incarnadine
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Juxtapoz Magazine and Chrome Yellow
June 22, 2012
It was a nice surprise this week to read Juxtapoz Magazine online and find my work featured in an article there. Thanks editors! Juxtapoz magazine comes out of California and has been around since 1996 and since 2009 has the largest circulation in the States. If you can’t find it in your country I’m sure you can order it or you can read the online version.
Sal Gabriel from the switched on arts blog Chrome Yellow also wrote a piece about my work this week. Sal, I like what you wrote and feel you really nailed what I’m doing. Thanks mate.
Here are the links:
| More: Juxtapoz Magazine and Chrome Yellow
| More: Girl in Red
| More: Figures
| Tags: collage, found image | More: Collages
John Moores Painting Prize
February 07, 2012
This is my entry for the John Moores Painting Prize 2012. “Figure in a Landscape” 2012 oil paint on 300 gms watercolor paper 200 x 150cm
| Tags: John Moores, painting competition | More: John Moores Prize
Sunset to Skull
January 29, 2012
Digging through my files I also found a picture of the early stages of a painting called Skull 2009. A gorgeous sunset but apparently I decided it wasn’t destined to remain that way.
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Baboons
I found this dark little painting in my files that I made in 2009 as part of a larger piece for the Turku Biennale. I had visited Korkeasaari, Helsinki’s Zoo, to photograph some of the animals. The baboon house has a very small viewing area constructed much like a public toilet entrance, and when I walked in I found two male baboons sitting behind glass licking large amounts of saliva over it and then licking it off. Over and over again. They seemed to really enjoy it and I took lots of photos of this strange behavior. The painting wasn’t going anywhere so I destroyed it.
| Tags: baboons, korkeasaari | More: Baboons
For better or worse
January 28, 2012
Yesterday I was trawling through my external hard drive which is shuddering and juddering to a halt and found a series of photographs I took of the progression of a painting I produced for the Turku Biennale in 2009. Personally it is interesting documenting the evolution of a painting and reviewing my decisions.
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Dark Reflections
January 26, 2012
A small project I began last year explored the effects of glossy surfaces reflecting images from magazines and art books. Materials experimented with were glossy black and silver card, exposed photographic paper and silver coating shaved from the back of a compact disc. Probably due to my less than adequate photographic skills the photos do not show the surprising depth and luminosity of the reflections. The curvature of the card produced a 3-dimensional effect on the subject reflected which was particularly effective on the subject’s face. It also seemed to transform a banal portrait into something elusive, enigmatic and mysterious. I found gazing into the tiny reflection totally hypnotizing.
Here are some examples…
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Hollywood Movie Poster Inspiration
January 24, 2012
Images from the Silver Screen that I’m finding on the web and are triggering ideas for paintings.
| More: Hollywood movie posters and stills
Found Double-Imaging
Last year I developed an interest in silver screen hollywood portraiture, imagery and continental cinema stills. This began when I purchased a few vintage Picture Show annuals in my local bookshop and a huge stack of Continental Cinema magazines on Chatsworth Rd Sunday market.
The other was my sudden obsession with holding printed images up to the light to see what images showed through from behind. I discovered that the combined images occasionally produced an interesting double-image that provoked new ideas about the subject being looked at.
I loved the surprise of discovering the appearance of a sudden humorous or disturbing double-image. For instance a hollywood starlets nose appearing in the same place as the thigh and knee of another’s on the printed image on the other side, thus producing the image of the tip of her nose poking out under the skirt of the other. Word play came into it too. A strange and mysteriously smiling face of a man appearing within a carpet pictured. A piece of text is visible, “The Eyes”, encouraging you to find the man’s eyes which seem to have become a part of the carpet’s pattern.
I played around with the idea more and realised that by certain techniques I could make the image from behind appear through by applying laquer which when dried retained the double-image as if the page was still wet.
I constructed some simple light boxes and tried it out on the hollywood portraits and here are some of the results.
