David Normal

“Space Vixen”, Airbrush, 14″ x 17″ (35.5 x 43 cm), 2000

Space Vixen was originally created as a poster for the Maritime Hall Concert Venue (now defunct?) in San Francisco.

Alternately entitled “Alien Cheesecake”, this damsel of the outer limits dallies on the thin line between “seduction” and “abduction”.

Space Vixen is sentimentalized hysteria incarnate, that is to say that she imbues that netherworld of fairy-folk, witches’ sabbaths, anti-gravity, secret societies and suchlike with a sensual naivete that belies her fetishistic pretensions , and reveals that, even if she is not exactly the “girl next door”, she is at least the “girl next galaxy” .  Perhaps if dressed a little more modestly you could bring her home to meet your folks, but then the question is, “What will it be like when she brings you home to meet her parents?” Ahh, light years and alien races intermingling in the vastness of space – these are but trifling complications that never impede true love’s course, and you do love her – don’t you?

“The Fountain of Illusion”, Colored Pencil, 2001

This was intended to be a preparatory sketch for a larger painting executed on silk that was to be a part of a grandiose series of paintings called the “Ethereal Battle”.   This ethereal battle was intended to be a depiction of the death and rebirth of worlds – a vast eschatological exegesis of visions.  Yep.  Too much, too high of a concept, and – guess what? – it never got finished.  But a few decent sketches were made, and my interest in working with silk began.

I kind of forget what this is supposed to represent exactly, but it had a specific meaning having to do with the hindu concept of “Maya”, and the vanity of technology; i.e.; the vanity of the material world as opposed to the transcendental world of spirit.  Hmm … I think if you take away the explanation people will come up with whatever interpretation they like – so, just forget I said that.  It’s about insects, optical illusions, and laboratory glassware.

This piece has been recently published in “SilkMilk” (February 2010)

“Tumult”,  Bile on Paper, 2006 

Executed with organs of a Cassowary bird, painted in stiletto heels and a gas mask using a petrified doughnut attached to a stethoscope.
The dimensions of the original piece are: multiple (yet transitory … )

“Cognitive Libertines”, Oil on Panel, 20 x 25 cm, 2008

As long as there is a world to be known, there are those who will never know when there is already too much to be known, and their unbridled perception, their wanton understanding, will debauch their consciousness, and brand them as profligates wandering in the splendor of their own hallucinations, or, to be more succinct, “Cognitive Libertines.”

This title was, of course, an afterthought – I had nothing so grandiose in mind to begin with.  Actually the painting is just embellished marginalia culled form old journals and cooked up as an exercise in oil painting.

Now that I have sufficiently de-mystified the painting, and reduced it to a hum-drum technical exercise I’d like it to be known that it is . . .