The Art of Bob Dylan

Many know his songs, carved into our hearts since the time the Beatles and Elvis broke onto the music scene. And like those icons, Bob Dylan is a music legend himself; but also an artist of many facets. His hands play the guitar; less famous, but no less fascinating are the works of those same hands that craft paintings and sculpture. When he’s not in the music studio, he is creating works of art in his Los Angeles metalwork studio,combining knickknacks, random pieces, equipment and other found items from across the American landscape. In 2013, The Halcyon Gallery in London displayed his exhibition of wrought iron gates, dubbed Mood Swings. Gracing the design label of his boutique bourbon, Heaven’s Door, are iron gates and metal rods; inspiration from his tactile art.

Dylan’s paintbrush has wandered across canvasses for decades: the face on the cover of his album Self Portrait from 1970, and in 1974, the charcoal trio of faces on the cover of Planet Waves.

His paintwork had culminated in a collection that became a book dubbed Drawn Blank, released in 1994. Six more books of his paintings and drawings would subsequently be published. Again, Americana as only he could reflect: portraits, landscapes, still lifes, and street scenes. All, which he conceded, created for the purpose to “relax and refocus a restless mind.” Harkening to the Monet series of haystacks, Dylan’s signature style is to duplicate certain paintings, with the main difference being the colours or tones.

“I chose images because of the meanings they have for me and patterns can be seen in the repeating images – roads, shacks, piers, automobiles, streets, bayous, railroad tracks, bridges, motels, truck stops, power lines, farmyards, theater marquees, churches, signs and symbols, etc. – all establishing a certain type of compositional value. I would say the purpose is plain, non-experimental or exploratory,” he explained.

“The nature of beauty, the lines, forms, shape and texture that emphasize the recognizable create harmony where natural scenery is the main feature. I restricted myself to traditional subject matter viewing nothing as shallow or gaudy.”

In 2006, the curator of the Kunstsammlungen Museum, in Chemnitz, Germany stumbled upon these exquisite works on a trip to New York. Through her determination, Dylan consented to a public exhibition of the works, for the first time. In 2011 and 2012, he presented his works at Gagosian Madison Avenue Gallery; the former being The Asia Series, images of the Far East, and the latter a satirical look at popular magazines, such as Playboy, Milan, London, Denmark all followed by exhibitions of their own.

Today, limited editions of his work are available to the public for purchase.

“The common theme of these works having something to do with the American landscape – how you see it while crisscrossing the land and seeing it for what it’s worth. Staying out of the mainstream and traveling the back roads, free born style,” he explained of his artwork. “My idea was to keep things simple, only deal with what is externally visible. These paintings are up to the moment realism – archaic, most static, but quivering in appearance. They contradict the modern world. The San Francisco Chinatown street stands merely two blocks away from corporate, windowless buildings. But these cold giant structures have no meaning for me in the world that I see or choose to see or be a part of or gain entrance to. If you look half a block away from the Coney Island hotdog stand, the sky is littered with high rises.”

by Dave Gordon | photo John Shearer