Posts Tagged With: Gay

Prey – Oil on Canvas

Posted on July 22, 2012 by Mark

Prey by Mark Wallis, 2000, oil on canvas.

Click on the image to see the uncensored version (PG – frontal nudity)

This is a detail from Prey, my second attempt at oil painting. In the full work, the model is stretched out in cruciform, and the photograph I worked from (by Jim French) appealed to my atheist nature. I was fascinated by the religious overtones and dramatic lighting, and the implied restraint of such physicality. There is drama in the male form which is rarely mined.

The piece was exhibited in Amsterdam’s Warmoesstraat, a bohemian stretch of galleries and bars between Centraal Station and The Dam Square.

One of the things which intrigued me about this painting was people’s reactions: people either loved it or hated it with nothing in between. Most people saw a face in the torso, found it striking and evocative or grotesque and offensive. It was good to provoke such extreme reactions. Art should always aspire to be something greater than the sum of it’s parts.

Categories: Art, Photography, Random | Tags: Cruciform, Gay, Nude, Oil on Canvas, painting, Religion, Rick Wolfmier | 1 Comment

Blue Man – Oil on Canvas

Posted on July 8, 2012 by Mark

Blue Man by Mark Wallis, 1999 oil on canvas. Click on image to enlarge

Oil paint is the most fantastic medium, versatile and rugged. The smell of linseed oil, the rolling of sleeves and the dirtying of hands are my idea of painting. Mistakes can be moved or wiped and the colours can be propelled around the canvas with as much passion or restraint as you like. Most artists I speak to are afraid to use them, but the rich, deep colours last for ever and the results speak for themselves.

Blue Man was my first attempt at painting in oils, and although it’s 13 years old I’m very proud of it. That and the fact that it sold before it was even completed. It’s a bold image which reflects how I felt at the time which was a bit frayed around the edges, and like early Hockney I based the painting on a photograph from an adult magazine. This particular image appealed to me enormously as it smashed the myth of men and their emotions. To see a big strong man in such a vulnerable pose was enigmatic and inspirational.

I still can’t do feet…

Categories: Art, Photography, Random | Tags: Gay, hockney, life study, male nude, Mark Wallis, Oil on Canvas, Oil Painting, The Vibes | 30 Comments

Escape to Barbary Lane

Posted on June 11, 2012 by Mark

‘Connie, I’ve found this darling place on Russian Hill on the third floor of the funkiest old building…and I can move in tomorrow,’ said Mary Anne Singleton when she realised she was moving up in the world.

I travelled 5000 miles to make a pilgrimage to a place that isn’t real. The mythical Barbary Lane is more of a state of mind than an actual place: the heart of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City novels. The famous wooden steps which lead up to it are real enough, and this is where people from all over the world go to have their picture taken. Standing on those steps I got a feeling of the fantastic history of San Francisco, following in the footsteps of Mary Anne Singleton, the starchy secretary who ran away from Cleveland to live a more colourful life.

The Victorian apartment house should be perched at the top of the Macondray Lane steps on Russian Hill, but all that greets the curious tourist, breathless from the steep incline of Taylor Street, is a dark fern-lined alley between buildings which bear little resemblance to the movie set (which was based on a place on Napier Lane.)

In the movies, the house itself is magical. At night, the garden is lit by Chinese lanterns and fairy lights, ‘the whole fantasia’ as Michael fondly remembers in Michael Tolliver Lives. Marijuana plants nestle next to Azalea bushes as the sound of moaning foghorns drift up from the bay. Maupin had created an iconic place to rival Tara in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind, but here a new tenant would receive a joint taped to a welcome note on their front door, a gift from Mrs. Madrigal, ‘the mother of us all.’

Not everyone was happy at number 28. “The moon is in ca-ca,” said Mona, the free-wheeling hippy with displacement issues who leaves the warmth and safety of Barbary Lane to forge into the wide blue yonder in search of her roots. ’You can’t hide from the cosmos!’ she says when Mary Anne is shocked by her nudity. It’s Mona who inspired the tagline of my blog, ‘Dreams of a Free Spirit,’ the questing romantic with her Buddhist chants and cosmic consciousness. Of all Maupin’s characters, Mona is the one who really chimes with me. I’ll travel a long way to find a place like Barbary Lane.

Below you can see a clip from the Tales of the City tv series, and Mary Anne’s wide-eyed arrival at the house. The series was funded by Channel Four in Britain because the US networks refused to portray gay people in a positive light. How things have changed…

Jump to 1.30 to see the where it all began…

I had to ask two taxi drivers and a realtor how to find the steps, so here’s a map…

Armistead Maupin’s new novel, The Days of Anna Madrigal will be published in 2013. Keep an eye on The Vibes for updates.

My adventures in San Francisco Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City Halloween in the Castro

Categories: Photography, Random, Travel | Tags: 28 Barbary Lane, Armistead Maupin, book, Gay, San Francisco, Tales of the City, Wooden steps, writing | 11 Comments

Tales of the City

Posted on April 29, 2012 by Mark

Picture it: San Francisco, 1976. Big hair and hedonism, disco dancefloors and decadence.

Armistead Maupin chronicled life in San Francisco in the 1970s in his newspaper column, and then in a series of captivating novels centered around the bohemian homestead of 28 Barbary Lane, high on Russian Hill.

It’s the home of one of the most fascinating and ingenious characters in modern fiction, garden-variety landlady Mrs. Madrigal, the enigmatic Earth Mother who views the world from a unique perspective, embodying both yin and yang. Whether she’s wafting around in a kimono and a cloud of smoke, or out-facing an adversary with the steely gaze of a gunslinger, she shines like a beacon as the disposessed are washed up at the gates of number 28.

Four years ago, one of my best friends gave me the complete set of novels, which became an instant addiction. Maupin was describing a golden age in the first three novels, which are rich, warm and humorous, humanitarian like Dickens, with a dark undercurrent straight from classic Hitchcock. The first great mystery in Tales of the City is Anna Madrigal herself. The name’s an anagram: a key to the door of her secret past…

Arguably the pivotal quote from the entire series is where Mrs. Madrigal refers to the logical family, as opposed to the biological, and here we see how gay people, rejected by their families, adapt in the face of homophobia. This forms the firm foundation on which the wonderful world of Barbary Lane is built. Maupin has talked about emotional reactions from fans at book signings and as strange as it sounds, it highlights the serious lack of positive depictions of gay people in popular culture, and how he threw us all a line. No one was writing about aspirational happy characters, and there were consequently no real gay role models.

He also deals with subjects like racism, and religious zeal with wit and ingenuity, and then he stands back and lets the bigots have it with both barrels. Maupin was the last American serviceman to leave Vietnam and the first mainstream author to write about Aids, as a major character dies in one of the early novels before the advent of drug therapy.

Maupin captures the natural rhythms of speech and observes human behaviour so acutely that he adds a whole dimension of realism that few authors can achieve, one of the reasons for his phenomenal success and the enduring love for his characters over the years.

On May 26th it will be 36 years since the first Tales of the City column appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle and more than a quarter century later, we have e-books, three epic TV mini series and a musical. Stay tuned for more about the Tales of the City series…

Check out my trip to San Francisco

http://www.armisteadmaupin.com/

Armistead Maupin on Facebook

Here’s an update for you: we’ve been visited by the man himself! Scroll down to comments…

Categories: Random, Vibe Monitor | Tags: 28 Barbary Lane, Anna Madrigal, Armistead Maupin, author, bigotry, books, disco, fiction, Gay, Homophobia, Mrs. Madrigal, novel, random, Religion, review, reviews, San Francisco, Tales of the City, writing | 46 Comments

Art From Mark – Fun With Photoshop

Posted on November 7, 2011 by Mark

This is a digital painting I did based on a very dull photograph of a little flower shop in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. To see how the picture was transformed, check out the original here.

This was my first attempt at a magazine cover, which was an assignment for OutNorthWest Magazine in Manchester. My brief was to provide a bright, uplifting image to inspire people and increase readership. I went for warm summer colours and a radiant, aspirational character, based on a photograph of a real person. Part of my inspiration was the Hed Kandi CD covers, and I think I managed to inject some pop culture into the image, because circulation spiked immediately: it was the most successful issue to date. Inset is the printed cover. I’ll be posting more magazine covers soon, but first:

Regular readers may recognise this image from my blog header. It’s Sparky, my ginger cat taken from a photograph of him singing. He was more than likely yawning, but singing sounds better. The original image can be seen in a forthcoming post about this handsome ginger tom in December.

There was some speculation a few years ago that the Daleks would be redesigned in the style of the 1920s. Noticing that the original Dalek already had a bit of a retro-industrial look to it, I designed the Art Deco Dalek, just for fun. Using an original 1960s movie Dalek as a base, I incorporated elements from chrome radios, toasters and glass valves – thank Buddha for Google Images.

This is my psychedelic CD cover for a compilation I did for friends called Far Out. It shows a Ganesh-type figure holding a Sonic Screwdriver (from Doctor Who,) a Mars Bar and an iPhone. I’ve noticed a have a radial style to a lot of my artwork, and rather than admit to being repetitive, I’m embracing it as my unique signature.

This is Panos, taken from a photograph and processed in the same style as the magazine cover above.

My friend Nikie wanted to raise her profile, so I designed this poster for her, using elements from her well-establshed barber shop in Manchester.

Here is another friend of mine, recreated in Photoshop.

This was made as part of a series of still images for an animation which I included in a Goldfrapp video. You can see the eye blinking here in the Goldfrapp Live! video.

And finally, my friends got married and as a big surprise, I did a huge ‘Gilbert and George’-style canvas which I gave them to blast away any nerves just before the ceremony. The canvas now hangs in pride of place in their hallway, and creates quite a stir for new guests as they come through the door.