Irish Outsider Art - Cypher - The Panic Artist
cypher
Hi Everyone,
Just thought I would 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 art writer.
I post blogs on the Irish art world (from an Outsiders perspective)
every week - reviewing exhibitions in Dublin, Cork and abroad as well
as books on art.
You can Check Out My Blog At - http://thepanicartist.livejournal.com/
I live and work in Dublin - Ireland. I passionately 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.
By now I have produced the largest and most extreme body of
heterosexual erotic drawings, pornographic paintings and tortured male
nudes in Irish art history. So I am an artist you will either love or
hate.
But I have also painted many beautiful landscapes, female portraits,
female nudes, 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 2,300 paintings (acrylics, watercolors, oils,
pastels or collages) and created over 2,400 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 - I was expelled after only a year. However since then I have
attended many life-drawing and life-painting classes 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, accumulating canvasses, 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. But my latter-day hero, the graffiti artist
Jean-Michel Basquiat - was also clearly in evidence.
In many of my works I used pornographic 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 relationship of the modern
male to the emancipated female. Specifically, it expressed what men
actually felt about sexual 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 sexual imagery like - Jeff Koons,
Andres Sorano, Thomas Ruff, or John Curran - 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 Portrane 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 sexual 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 Irish art world. My work has been called
sexist, 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 274pp collection of my
writings on art, and 'The Panic Artist' - my 660pp autobiography,
which
many have claimed are better than my art.
I post a scathing monthly blog on art in Dublin which you can also
read at my myspace page - myspace.com/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 360 of my best paintings and drawings from
January 1987 - July 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 Sexually Explicit Nature
You May find Offensive. My Website Is For Over 18's Only.
Website - www.thepanicartist.com Cypher / The Panic Artist
Yours Sincerely
Cypher - The Panic Artist