Mark Gregor (born Marek) studied at Falmouth School of Art to gain a BA Hons in Fine Art before working in Bristol taking commissions for reproductions of Old Master paintings for interior designers and architects. In 1990, Mark had major brain surgery for an aneurysm. He continued to produce his work in his flat up until his death in May 2014. His incredible pen drawings bring creatures of the imagination roaring to life and bounding off of the page. Take a look at some of these extraordinary works below.
Pen on paperPen on paperPen on paperPen on paperPen on paper
Above images: Jelly Buckingham, Ghost & The Smartest Eye
Jelly Buckingham works with acrylic on canvas. Mister Jellington usually likes to work late at night, and quenches his mind with copious quantities of sweet tea, water mixtures, the endless gurgle of 100m deep whirlpools of paint, and surreal landscapes created by melodic sounds. Sometimes he listens to the same song up to fifty times during one session to maintain mood and momentum. Each painting is a very organic process and Jelly is primarily concerned with capturing not only a certain character but a specific feeling and mood.
Above image: Manuel Bonifacio, Aeroplanes and Spades
On 29 April, Pallant House Gallery welcomed a new exhibition showcasing the work of Manuel Bonifacio; one of six Outside In 2012 Award Winners. The exhibition is a colourful array of Bonifacio’s imaginative characters and creatures, and is definitely a must-see if you’re down on the south coast in the next month.
Born in December 1947 near Lisbon, Portugal, Bonifacio pursued his interest in drawing and pottery after dropping out of school at the age of eight. His most recent collection of work, which features the award winning ‘Mermaid’ and a selection of pottery, is inspired by his passion for archaeology and animals. Bonifacio paints, draws, sculpts and makes at ArtVenture – a creative day centre for adults with learning difficulties – for four hours every Wednesday and Friday. Since his Award win, Bonifacio has exhibited in Birmingham and London and now has work in collections in Switzerland and New York. In recognition of Bonifacio’s talent, an Outsider Art collector will be travelling over from Switzerland to attend this much-anticipated exhibition.
Manuel Bonifacio, Jungle Animal
“Manuel’s thing at the moment is mermaids, but he loves motorbikes,” his niece says. “He likes to do things his own way; he thinks ‘I’m the artist and I know what I’m doing’!” Bonifacio’s mermaids (one of which one him the Award in 2012) have an interesting narrative all of their own. “They live in Lisbon, but they go all over the world,” says Bonifacio. Lisbon is in fact populated with several mermaid statues, including eight in the large fountains in Rossio Square. Bonifacio adds: “All the children used to say ‘Look, there she is – the mermaid!’ She waves to the people, and then goes under water again when the boats pass.”
At a young age, Bonifacio joined the fire brigade as a volunteer and his life’s ambition was to be in the army. Many of his works reflect his passion for army transportation, depicting helicopters, aeroplanes, motorbikes and boats. His work is also inspired by politics and everything he sees on television, but most of it comes straight from his colourful imagination. His sister describes the huge variety of subject matter he depicts: “The birth of Jesus, the circus, the Pope, the Queen, Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron, dancers, Christmas-inspired pieces, motorcycles, musicians, buskers, birds, divers, fish, helicopters, dogs, horses, wolves, mermaids, and always people. There are faces in most of his work.”
Manuel Bonifacio, Motorbike and Man
Keen to explore and take on a challenge, Bonifacio has previously experimented with printmaking and wood carving and he occasionally dabbles in watercolours and oils. His portfolio also includes an array of distinctive ceramic mugs, vessels and faces. Walking from Cobham to Kingston regularly – a 20 minute drive – Bonifacio notes down road names, makes sketches and absorbs nature and life, which are ever present in his work. One of his figures was inspired by a statue on a roundabout in his hometown, but more generally, the characters he so vividly creates come straight from his mind. There is a sense that he could conjure anything; a donkey, a bullfighter, or various forms of transport.
Bonifacio’s sister, Maria Odone, says: “Manuel’s work has been a valuable asset to everyone who knows him as it is also a way he likes to communicate. His ideas and perception of what is going on around him both locally and nationally are very unique. His ambition as an artist is to travel around the world, finding places and people that will inspire him.”
Manuel Bonifacio, Ball Games
Roger Cardinal, who coined the term Outsider Art in 1972 as the English equivalent of Jean Dubuffet’s Art Brut, was one of the Outside In: National judges. He speaks of the moment he first saw Bonifacio’s Mermaid at the Gallery: “It struck me as entirely familiar and made me think of the Frenchman Guillaume Pujolle, an early star of Art Brut whose lyrical images I cherish. This brief and decisive moment established Bonifacio as my top choice. The Mermaid is a perfect reality for him [Bonifacio]. I see her arms and elongated fingers as enacting the motions of swimming, although she can also be said to be flying. Hence she is capable of traversing earth, sea and air, and becomes and emblem of the artist’s unfettered imagination.”
Entry to Manuel Bonifacio: My Imaginary Cave is free. The exhibition continues in the Studio at Pallant House Gallery until 1 June 2014.
“I produce vibrant works on paper, wood, MDF and canvas in a neo-expressionist style that is often mistaken as ‘outsider’ but I take that as a compliment.
Intense and energetic, rich in vivid colour and heavily covered in text, stencils and bursts of texture, the works are primarily concerned with a universal experience filtered through my life. I suggest dichotomies, wealth vs poverty, primitive vs sophisticated, integration vs segregation, justice vs injustice and inner vs outer experience.
Whilst the majority of my work evidently references pop, neo expressionism and outsider art, I have successfully developed a language of my own. I harness the synergy of appropriation; poetry, drawing and painting which marries text and image, abstraction and figuration, historical information mixed with contemporary critique.
Places that I have visited also directly influence my work — the colours of New Orleans, the Caribbean and Malaysia, and the urban landscapes of New York, Paris, London and Berlin.
Contemporary culture, history, geography, political and corporate worlds, word-play, social commentary and music all get put into the food blender too.
My work has no set agenda, theme or literal subject matter — it is informed by what I am passionate about, what makes me angry and what makes me joyous — how I respond to what I see and hear around me… I try to find beauty in the ordinary, in the mundane, in the over-looked, and in what is commonly regarded as ugly… I am also scathing of what I see as unfair, cruel and brutal in the world. This is also your world.”
– Michael Dawson.
ZaphappyHoly Island (Lust for Life)All Ju Ju Bendy Business Coming To An EndMagic Cat
“Images from a yellow book. Where did these come from? I haven’t seen these things. Yet, they appeared as I looked at an empty page. How bizarre. Notice the antenna and the blood. The antenna receive signals from some intangible world of thought and the blood anchors them to the psychical world. Just as I received these images through the spiritual and brought them to the physical. This pleased me, and perhaps it will please you.” – Jumbo Jones.
In 2003, at the age of 20, Seth Chwast took an oil painting class at the Cleveland Museum of Art, where he first began describing his world in paint. He displayed an innate ability to mix colours and create amazing works of art that reflect his vision of his world and the world around him. Ten years into his career, Seth has shown his work at numerous locations in the United States including the Time Equities Building in New York City and Penn State College of Medicine. With over 700 paintings, drawings, silkscreens and sculptures to his name, Seth’s subject matter ranges from cityscapes, mythical creatures and portraits to animals and abstract paintings.
Hot Pink EchinaceaThe Big Pink FlowerMulti Coloured Shapes JungleThe Abstract Garden with Multicoloured LeavesThe Clover in my Garden
Hidekazu Sogabe was born in Osaka and has lived and worked in London since 1997. His early paint work puts together abstract, flattened figures, whilst his more recent sculptural work re-imagines his concerns for embodied experience.
You can see more of Hidekazu’s work by clicking here
Open until 1 December 2013 at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, Kate Bradbury: Squalls and Murmurations is the second exhibition in a series celebrating the Six Award Winners of Outside In: National 2012, a triennial competition for artists from the margins.
Art Historian Roger Cardinal, performance artist Bobby Baker and ex-Director of Pallant House Gallery, Stefan van Raay, chose Kate Bradbury as one of six Outside In Award Winners as part of the 2012 National exhibition, for which one of the prizes was a solo exhibition in the Studio. Cardinal said of the competition and the subsequent winners: “It is about showing the public that ordinary people without training can produce great work. Art can happen anywhere in all sorts of places.”
Bradbury’s art career began some years ago in a run-down house in North London, where she started to intuitively make pictures and sculptures from abandoned belongings. Unearthing a role of thin Chinese paper and a well of black ink, an unforeseen tide of repetitive image and pattern-making promptly began. Bradbury also created sculptures from salvaged litter found in the tall, crumbling house.
This obsession with found objects can perhaps be traced back to Bradbury’s childhood, where some family friends who were archaeologists would take her off into caves where she witnessed cave paintings with crude handprints and began finding and collecting things. Now, Bradbury collects material on her way to work, or on her way home from work – whatever she can find and wherever she can find it.
Her suitcase people – the doctor, the artist, and Railroad Jim – all have their own personalities, each with a story inside their box-bodies. New additions to Bradbury’s family of sculptures are her ‘goat’ creatures. Constructed from the bristle-end of brushes, severed musical instruments and human faces, they came to life after Bradbury happened upon the ‘disembodied goat heads’ at her local car boot sale. Not wanting to separate a few goats from the herd, Bradbury took the lot before restoring them: “I have gifted them legs and bodies and I hope that one day soon I will have identified and practised the Holler that will alert a distant herdsman to their whereabouts, so that they may return to their native hills.”
To complement her trademark sculptures, the exhibition also includes some of Bradbury’s trademark ink drawings. It was one of these fantastical black and white worlds; The ones that I’ve been saving to make a feather bed, for which Bradbury was granted Outside In: Award Winner status. Bradbury says of her contrasting practices (sculpture and ink): “Both of these have become passions that fill both my waking and sleeping hours with ink-stains and splinters.”
It is this diverse creativity that gives the exhibition its name. Bradbury explains: “A squall is a storm and that suited the swirly patterns in my drawings. The monoprints often have a stormy sky and a lot of the sculptures are crude and brutal in texture. Murmuration is playing on the word murmur, a much quieter space like the fine lines and delicate paper that I draw with. So it’s loud and quiet and reflects both sides of my work.”
With no formal art education, Bradbury is inspired by known – Klee, Miro, Franz Kline – and unknown artists, stage sets, archaeology, visions, inventions, and by music and song. She thinks about ideas for her work whilst at her day job – in a sandwich shop – where she has the space to go to a different place in her head. She doesn’t make work to please an audience; she makes it because it needs to be made. She explains: “I get a picture of something in my head and then need to make it, to offload it and then I can think about something else. I get obsessed with an idea and try to see it through. I’d love to get a studio and be able to make some bigger or noisier work and I like the idea of making a stage set, working with animation and just to keep finding inspiration.”
Kate Bradbury, The Artist
Kate Bradbury, Detail of the Dust Gatherer
Kate Bradbury, Detail of Railroad Jim
Kate Bradbury, Angel
Kate Bradbury, Detail of Where Have all the Birdsongs Gone
Outside In was set up by Pallant House Gallery in 2006 to provide opportunities for artists with a desire to create who see themselves as facing a barrier to the art world. The project’s main vehicle is a triennial open art exhibition which was first held in 2007 and featured 100 artists from across Sussex. By 2012, the project had gone national, engaging more than 1,500 artists and 13,000 audience members.
Kate Bradbury: Squalls and Murmurations will be on in the Studio at Pallant House Gallery until 1 December 2013. Entry is free. Click here for more information.
Above Image: Steve Murison, ‘Your Cat Was Sick at the Disco’
‘Upon a time I was really ill, and now I paint at my little desk, steaming mug of coffee at hand in the shadow of my pepper plant. As I step outside into the good of life I drag with me tales of horror, hope, witches and pills.’
Steve Murison, ‘Your Patchwork Witch has an Eternal Cat’Steve Murison, ‘Let Summer Howl Through the Guts of a Dog’Steve Murison, ‘Zombified Eternally’Steve Murison, ‘Take Another Trip with Your Black Tongued Pig’
I asked Steve about the excellent titles he gives his pieces, his response was:
“Each painting is a little story. As they take shape I try to encapsulate the tale, and the title has became an integral part of the process. Once it has a name it becomes tangible and present and I can start bringing it all together. Sometimes I have the title before I begin, but mostly it emerges as the lines become clear.”
KDOA 