Bob Dylan: artist

Still a little nostalgic for Copenhagen, I found myself on the website for the Statens Museum (the National Gallery of Denmark). I was excited to learn that they will be exhibiting work by musician/writer/artist Bob Dylan.

The exhibition, which runs from September 2010 to February 2011, features drawings and sketches made while on the road during the period of 1989-1992. Some new pieces will also be introduced, including some acrylic paintings, which will be shown to the public for the first time.

This exhibition documents the artist's progression from drawings and sketches, to canvas, to large scale acrylic paintings. Dylan takes his viewers on tour with him, as witnesses to the people and places he has observed over the years.

"I just draw what’s interesting to me, and then I paint it. Rows of houses, orchard acres, lines of tree trunks, could be anything. I can take a bowl of fruit and turn it into a life and death drama. Women are power figures, so I depict them that way. I can find people to paint in mobile home communities. I could paint bourgeois people too.

I’m not trying to make social comment or fulfil somebody’s vision and I can find subject matter anywhere. I guess in some way that comes out of the folk world that I came up in." Bob Dylan

A selection from the Drawn Blank series is currently being exhibited at the Halcyon Gallery in London until April 10 2010.

images from Halcyon Gallery