Cypher - The Panic Artist
Website - www.thepanicartist.com
Hi Guys,
Just thought I'd write a brief introduction to my life
and art. Which I hope will make you interested in seeing my website.
I am a challenging, disturbing and controversial 36 year old (b1971)
Irish Expressionist/Realist painter and writer, living and working in
Dublin. I painted and drew from the age of four, but I date the
beginning of my serious work to my mid-teens in the late 1980's. I
have had 5 solo exhibitions in Dublin between 1994-2002. I have
produced the largest and most extreme body of hetero***ual *****c
drawings, ****ographic paintings and tortured male ****s in Irish art
history. So I am an artist you will either love or hate. But I have
also painted many beautiful landscapes, female ****traits, female
****s, abstractions and even still-life's. I deliberately work in a
number of styles and a variety of mediums, since I thrive on
experimentation. Most of my paintings are executed on Arches or
Fabriano 300lb watercolor paper, and is small to medium scale. I have
painted over 2,220 paintings (acrylics, watercolors, oils, pastels or
collages) and created over 2,210 finished drawings (pencil, Indian
ink, coloured pencil, conte or charcoal). My work has been influenced
by Pablo Picasso, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Vincent Van Gogh, Richard
Gerstl, Egon Schiele, Lucian Freud, and Julian Schnabel. My work is in
private collections in Ireland, Britain and America.
I have been painting seriously since the age of 10 when I vowed to
become an artist. I left school at 16 in order to pursue my art full
time. At the age of 18 without any scholastic qualifications, I was
accepted into art college on the basis of exceptional talent. But at
the time I did not find art college suited my very personal approach
to art - and I stayed only a year. However since then I have attended
many life-drawing and life-painting cl***** in the National College of
Art and Design in Dublin. In the late 1980's, I fell under the spell
of Picasso, buying and meticulously annotating John Richardson's
famous biography. I set myself the seemingly impossible task of
equaling the master's prolific output, ac***ulating canv*****,
collages assemblages and works on paper, and keeping meticulous
records and diaries.
By 1990, my distinctive style was beginning to emerge: it owed
something to Picasso, and to the neo-expressionist movement which had
hit New York in the early 1980's. And my latter-day hero, the graffiti
artist Jean-Michel Basquiat was also clearly in evidence. In many of
my works I used ****ographic magazines and videos as source material;
words were added, often expressing a combination of attraction and
revulsion. Much of the work dealt with the problematic relation****p of
the modern male to the emancipated female. Specifically, it expressed
what men actually felt about ***ual desire, as opposed to what they
claimed to feel. In so doing, my work was often brutally frank about
the baseness of the male agenda, and the vampiric aspect to the
pleasure-seeking motives of both genders. In addition, I distanced
myself from other artists using ***ual imagery like - Jeff Koons,
Andres Sorano, Thomas Ruff, or John Curran, for example - in that I
was clearly involved and seduced, not distanced and ironic.
In 1991, I suffered my first mental breakdown - I attempted suicide
nine times between 1991 and 1994. This lead to three incarcerations in
St. Ita's mental hospital ****trane Co. Dublin. I was diagnosed with a
Borderline Personality Disorder and depression. However slowly but
surely thanks to many friends and lovers I gained some distance from
my illness.
It was only in 1994, that I began to show my work to galleries in
Dublin after being cajoled to do so by the Irish Times art critic Mic
Moroney. However my work was angrily rejected by one Dublin gallery
after another. Art dealers, disturbed by my often ***ual subject
matter, and the no-holds-barred frankness of my treatment, rejected my
work, often with great scorn and hostility. Still, I continued to
paint. In 1996 the art critic and television personality John Farrell,
secured my first major exhibition in the Anarchist book shop 'The
Garden of Delights' in Christchurch, Dublin. That was when I received
my first newspaper review by Mebh Ruane in the Sunday Times. But I
continued to be rejected by every official art gallery in Dublin.
Then in 2000 I was discovered by the curator of the Oisin Gallery Paul
O'Kelly who spent his whole months wages buying eleven of my drawings
- it was my first sale. Later in the year I had my first retrospective
of 99 of my works at the Oisin Gallery. The catalogue was the most
expensive the Oisin had ever made and was written by Paul O'Kelly,
myself and the head of the Dublin Rape Crisis center Olive Braiden. My
autobiographical and highly explicit, retrospective provoked alarm,
admiration and bafflement in equal measure. I was reviewed scathingly
in every Irish newspaper, featured on Irish news and sold over e37,000
worth of art. But from that moment on - relations with the Oisin
plummeted along with my five seconds of fame. They hated my new work
and blocked every submission I made. Then I conceived the idea of
installing my entire bedroom and living room in the huge Oisin gallery
and living there night and day for five days painting and interacting
with the gallery goers. They loved the idea. "Five Day Wonder" my last
exhibition was staged in March 2002. It was a sales disaster! Within
two years (after more submissions to the Oisin were savagely shot
down), I split with the gallery in acrimony.
Despite my brief success with the Oisin, I continue to be rejected at
every turn. By now I have collected over 87 letters of rejection from
galleries, museums and agents in Ireland and abroad. In fact since the
Oisin turned their back on me - every single art gallery in Dublin has
now rejected my art. I am persona-non-grata in the Dublin art world.
My work has been called ***ist, ugly, obscene, debased, adolescent,
immature, post-graduate, and technically inept. But it has also been
called ground breaking, courageous, explosive and even beautiful.
In 1994 I began writing 'The Panic Texts' a 330pp collection of my
writings on art, and 'The Panic Artist' my 600pp autobiography, which
many have claimed are better than my art. I post a scathing monthly
blog on art in Dublin which you can go to at
http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=cypherthepanicartist
I no longer hold any delusions about the quality of my work. I am
little better than a fourth rate painter, but never the less I also
feel I have deserved a fairer shot at exhibiting than I have been
given.
Please check out my website and make up your own mind on an art which
is impossible to show any where else but here on the net. My website
contains over 235 of my paintings and drawings from January 1987 -
March 2007. It also has a detailed introduction to my work, an
extensive outline biography (both written by myself), and a collection
of Irish newspaper reviews and writings on my art.
Warning My Website Contains Some Images Of A ***ually Explicit Nature
You May find Offensive. My Website Is For Over 18's Only.
Website - www.thepanicartist.com
Cypher / The Panic Artist
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