Featured Artists from Direct Art Volume 14

On The Cover: David Bowers

Urban populations are more divorced from their food supplies than ever before. There is total ignorance of how farmers raise the food that magically appears wrapped in plastic, canned, or frozen in our local grocery stores. As long as the Christmas turkey or the Easter ham appear on time, nobody thinks about how vulnerable we all are if something breaks the chain of supply.

Below: The Pig Walker, Oil on Wood, 18" x 12"

Just as the historical perspective shows us how different things once were, and that things will not always be as they are now, the paintings of Julie Durkin demonstrate how participatory and interactive the common culture has been with the historical record. Her art expands with a payload of historical references, of her individual choosing, that are relevant to current cultural conditions, and artistic discourse of today.

Below: Make Believe, Oil on panel, 16"x16"x4"

I.
Poet, poet
In the quick night I slice your heart.
Surgeon, short-order cook
give me technicians’ biopsy: One transparent byte.

Long ago the power elided
into the hands of a very few
who have since farmed us as crop:
reaping our bodies for slaughter
in the marketplace of modem Gomorrah.

Buck sucks!
Every logic justifying violence is a lie!
The face of the planet is scarred by endless commercial atrocity.
Heart is lost in the greedy phosphor of carnage.
Men disrobe to the bestiality
that Civilization pretends to cloak.

Below: Mind of Osama, 40" x 30", ink on beveled edged canvas

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Terrance Lindall
Surrealist Artist
A Legend in His Own Mind
Writes Himself into History

The Stone Eater, 24 X 36 inches, oil on linen, 1968

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The Old Branch of the New Library Oil on panel 16" x 17"

Robert McCann

       My painting ideas are heavily influenced by current events and entertainment. I’m interested in the ambiguous area between action and violence, in loading images with comic and tragic themes. I’m not critiquing movies or video games, but I think there’s an existing visual language there. Anything could happen within four corners, but built on some kind of logic. My paintings have increasingly reached for broader metaphor and folklore to try to compete with the amped-up news cycle. It’s hard to be too absurd when the country’s leading fantasists are our heads of state.