11 Paintings from 2025

More and more I tend to only paint from those photographs that in which I find some human truth, figures who appear to carry the weight of the world. Empathy is a matter of fact. Often I return to the same photographs that then become more than mere photographs; spirit visions from another world. The woman who graces the cover of Aboriginal Music of Australia, probably photographed by Alice Moyle who recorded the record around 1970, is not included on the CD re-release of the album now named: Australia: Aboriginal Music. I painted the image before in 2019, illustrating the same song, a type of Wu-unka song sung by Utekn and Yaimuk in the Wik-ngatara language in northern Queensland. The woman in the photograph could well be either Utekn or Yaimuk, since most other tracks on the record are sung by males.

The photograph used for the above painting comes from the booklet to the LP Indian Music of the Upper Amazon from 1954 on the Folkways label. The painting accompanies a Campa Mourning Ceremony recorded by Harold Courlander in Peru, but the image is captioned "Conibo dancers at animal sacrifice ceremony." I assume, the photograph was taken by Courlander. Here I separated two female dancers from a larger group, without whom the image become more magical. Both Campa (or Ashaninka) and the Conibo live in the Amazon basin in Peru.

David Toop (b. 1949) is an English musician (once a member of the Flying Lizards), author (contributor of The Wire, f.e.), and ethnomusicologist who recorded extensively among the Yanomamo in Ecuador.

The album: Lost Shadows: In Defence Of The Soul (Yanomami Shamanism, Songs, Ritual) is featured in the Top 100 twice, while another song, Flying Witch Music, from Papua New Guinea. from the BBC archives, at #3 in the Top 100 of 2024, was featured on one of his radio shows for the BBC.

The above is rather big painting (well, 30x30 inches isn't all that big) that I've adding to for almost two years. Originally the painting was one that I found in the stacks of the art room, left behind by a student, featuring Princess Leia of Star Wars, in a pose reminiscent of some Victorian portrait paintings. The painting had some obvious mistakes, that I, out of boredom, I guess, fixed. At the time I didn't know the Star Wars connection, as I never was interested in any of that. The main thing I had to fix was the skin tone of Leia, which looked awful; eventually the face was substituted by one of another skin color: Aida Victoria, a contemporary American blues singer. On the top left of the canvas I reproduced an image of Lady Maria Conyngham by Sir Thomas Lawrence. Central top is a remake of a painting by Pablo Picasso, a portrait of one of his lovers. I started adding, after Aida Victoria, other Top 100 2024 entries: The Static, a group around Glenn Branca, and Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, led by Lydia Lunch, and notably included James Chance on tenor saxophone.

Sun Ra appeared on a canvas that I had laying around to experiment with. The context again is my office hours as a professor of art at FSW. If no students attend these times dedicated to them I fill these hours with doing some painting myself in the classroom. Sun Ra has been the highest scoring musician from the Top 100 2024 and needed some extra exposure in the series of paintings. Three songs are in the list, Watusa is linked now to this painting, and it appeared in the movie Space is the Place. If you haven't seen it: Now's the time.

Again an image I used before: Two Ainu women performing the "Rekukara," the Japanese equivalent to the Canadian katajjait. The difference between the previous painting and the current one is that the Top 100 song is that it represents neither geographical location; A small but significant population of Ainu had settled in Kamchatka, the eastern most territory of the Soviet Union. The recording "rekukura examples" was made in Kamchatka, Russia; the two Ainu women performing a Rekukara is the oldest known of this kind, and was recorded in 1941. The painting was done on a 20x10 canvas reserved for the Top 100 20024. Half of the paintings in that series were done on this format. The next five images are painted on a 10x20 inch canvas.

Gidole, Ethiopia

Chrissie Hynde, Pretenders: For the first time since I started in 1983, the Pretenders are listed in a Top 100: Message of Love.

This is the first instance of me painting a work of folk art as a substitute for a track of which a more appropriate image could not be found. This is the cover of: Kwangkay: Funerary Music of the Dayak Benuaq of Borneo.

Interpretation of an image found on Musique Ethiopennes. Throughout the year I have explored several collections of traditional Ethiopian music.

A handful of important people

Laurie Spiegel

Through the LP New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media, I have been aware of Laurie Spiegel since the mid-1980s. It was the inclusion of Laurie Anderson that drew me to the LP of all female composers. A few years ago I acquired The Capriccio Series of New American Music Number Two, another compilation of all female composers. I think I might have to get more.

Giacinto Scelsi

Another contemporary composer I've known since the mid-eighties is Giacinto Scelsi. I recorded live broadcasts from the Holland Festival during those times. I still have the tapes. His association with John Cage, and especially Alvin Curran, brought him back on my radar.

Bela Bartok

Bela Bartok doesn't need much of an introduction. I've painted him several times before and own more than ten records. I stopped buying classical records but I never leave a Bartok behind when looking at thrift shops.

Patti Smith

The Top 100 2024 features a live recording of Horses. Patti Smith has been a continuous presence in the Top 100.

William S. Burroughs

Associated with Patti Smith (above) and many, many other Top 100 regulars, Burroughs now, for the first time has his own recording (A Thanksgiving Prayer) listed. The Bob Rauschenberg Gallery at my school hosted an exhibition about William S. Burroughs, featuring works by Laurie Anderson and himself. It just ended, but a new one (this time with David Bradshaw) will be opening in the new year.




 

Sound??

Rahsaan Roland Kirk, oil on canvas, 10x20"

Some of Dick Fontaine's recordings of Rahsaan Roland Kirk for his film Sound?? belong to my favorite tidbits I know of him. Partly because it comes with visuals, it's a film alright, Kirk seems to embody the spirit of the freedom of sound, where the film is about. The film is based on ideas of John Cage, and Cage himself narrates the film, but Cage himself is not able to liberate "sound" yet (in the movie at least,) and leaves it to Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Cage is as a narrator not the person you want to listen to, to become enlightened by new ideas about music. Cage, as a narrator, is one I skip over to get to the good parts in the movie, which belong to Kirk. Similarly, when Cage appears on a record with Sun Ra, another great visionary of free jazz, it is the side with Cage that remains in mint condition, whereas the Sun Ra side is worn down. John Cage is not a fan of recorded music, as music ought to be experienced as a time-piece, but even recordings are unique in the moment; an owl hooting from outside, a scratch on the record, another music recording coming from the room next-door, a different mood, all these random chance events add to the listening experience of the record, or film. When Cage exclaims: "Why don't they just shut up" in Sound??, I feel like he's talking to himself, talking over the "sounds" of Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
 

No title

 

Cover Image from Musique Proto-Indochinoise

Musique Proto-Indochinoise - Recueillie Chez Les Moïs Des Hauts Plateaux Du Viet-Nam is a record recorded in 1955 by Frantz Laforest: "Mission Ethnographique 1955 sur les Hauts Plateaux du Viet-Nam." Moïs or Montagnard (from la montangne—the mountain) is an umbrella term for several groups of indigenous people from the central highlands of Vietnam. The record does not specify between different groups. The woman represented here (and on the cover of the record) is most likely one of the main performers from the recordings by Laforest; she also appears on the back sleeve playing a jew's harp. In the image above she's playing a stringed bamboo instrument that I don't recognize from the descriptions of the songs, neither from instruments I've come across before. The top 100 song is performed on a "carillon hydraulique," a sort of bamboo organ. It's also possible that Laforest, who took the photo featured on the cover and back sleeve, posed a particularly cute indigenous woman with the instruments for the sake of increasing sales. Probably not, but the practice of employing cute women, stripping them above their waist, was very much standard procedure a half a century ago. The anthropologists paid extra for the the women, to reinforce the notion they were primitives, to strip. Years ago I swore not to use gratuitous nudity anymore for my Top 100 illustrations but recently a number of 50s and 60s racy photographs have functioned as a source for paintings. Another painting recently completed is of a woman from a group of women in a healing ceremony from an image by the famous Charles Duvelle, that appeared on the record Anthologie de le Musique du Tchad from 1966.

Moundang woman (Duvelle)

De Klankbron

"Lahu" cover image, 20x10 inches, 2024

De Klankbron is een wekelijks digitaal muziekprogramma toegewijd aan ethnologische muziek dat word samengesteld door Fred Gales. Er zijn nu meer dan honderd programmas te beluisteren via Concertzender.nl. Veel van de muziek die word gedraaid, en zeker de muziek uit zuid-oost Asie, werd opgenomen door Fred Gales zelf. Ik heb zo'n beetje 50 afleveringen beluisterd sinds ik het bij toevel ondekte zo'n twee jaar geleden. Ik heb zojuist de digitale versie van de Lahu CD gekocht omdat het openingsnummer Solo on the naw, niet alleen in the Top 100 2023 voorkomt, maar ook in 2024 van de partij zal zin. Ik had gehoopt dat er text en uitleg bij de download zou zitten, maar helaas; ik moet het doen met wat Gales erover vertelde op de internetradio. Solo on the naw was opgenomen in Thailand in 1992.
 

Girl With Gun?

Dani people, 20x10 inches, oil on canvas, 2024

I'm quite pleased with this painting of a Dani woman from the Baliem Valley of Western Papua. The area was once a colony of the Netherlands called Dutch Papua New Guinea. It became part of Indonesia in 1962. Indonesia became independent in 1949 in the aftermath of the Japanese occupying the islands during WWII. I was born in the Netherlands in 1964; Papua was the most fearsome of the Dutch colonies, and when I was young the territory was used by parents to strike fear in the heart of their children. It worked, cannibalism seemed the most gruesome humanity had to offer at the time (my parents didn't teach me that the dropping of the atomic bomb was way scarier.) This woman, mischievously smiling, represents all of that history. What is she hiding? Does she carry a knife behind her back. It reminds me of a painting by Ronald Ophuis Girl With Gun from 2011.
 

A name!

Wambustrik, mourning. 20x10 inches, oil, 2024.

"Méditation de Wambustrik sur la tombe de son fils, mort il y a peu de temps." [Caption of photo 7 by Pierre Allard and Philippe Luzuy, Visages de Bronze. Ides et Calendes Neuchatel, 1960] There's a name, finally, to one of the figures portrayed in Visages de Bronze. When I last painted him, almost two years ago, he was just a "Shuar man." The book has been the main source of illustrating those songs that were recorded by Allard and Luzuy during the same expedition in 1960, and that appeared on Jivaro: Indiens Shuar, Cayapa, Otavalo. I do not know if Wambustrik is heard on the recordings, but there is a certain synchronicity between photos and sounds.
 

My-This, My-That, Myself (Redemption)

The full caption below the photograph that I used for the painting above reads: "Ill. 6: A Shaman of the Semoq-Beri tribe with the bamboo zither keranting (recording no. 11)." It comes from the pages inserted in the album: The Semoi of Malacca.

A shaman of the Semoq-Beri

Recording 11 is the recording illustrated for the Top 100 series, as it was in my previous painting from last week. I then accused myself of exoticism and found myself guilty on using gratuitous nudity. This painting then offers me a bit of redemption, as it is the one and only image that could possibly illustrate the song well. Yet, this is also a depiction of the "other." I've been painting the "other" for most of my life, and it feels strange to paint myself, or my familiar surroundings. As to counter any illusion of moral integrity, I immediately started painting an image I found on the Wikipedia page dedicated to the Senoi. 

Senoi woman playing the bamboo-zither kereb

 

The full caption reads: "Senoi women and children performing dance-music at Perak River, 1906. Note the head-dresses and girdles. It is impossible to depict the "other" in a fair and subjective way, as there is always projection involved. The above painting belongs to the Western tradition of painting.

Carolyn Niethammer didn't have such a long history available to her when it comes to representing the "other." Her Daughters of the Earth: The Lives and Legends of American Indian Women is nearly fifty years old. For the time her integrity was probably greater that that of many contemporaries. In the introduction she states that she probably isn't without bias. Reading the book there are indeed plenty of instances that show a racist relation between object and subject. Using the format of a zine, I compiled some of the most interesting observations and anecdotes of the book, and drew every image.

Daughters of the Earth, cover, 8.5x5.5 in.

Niethammers representation of Olive Oatman, one of the most famous westerners held captive by Native Americans, is far from accurate. I had happened to read Oatman's story in the Smithsonian Magazine not too long ago and was like "What!" when I read her story told by Niethammer.

Two pages from "Daughters of the Earth," 24 p.

Senoi-Shipobo-Sanapana-Bassa

 

Cover image of An Anthology of South-East Asian Music

 

 

 

 

 

The above painting illustrates a recording of a Semoq Beri shaman from a volume of An Anthology of South-East Asian Music dedicated to the Semoi of Malacca. The inside of the album has many images, including one of the performing shaman. I opted to use the image from the cover of the album because of the series of full-length indigenous female individuals I am working on, reverting back to this not so politically correct mode of image making. Years ago I swore not to engage in "exoticism" and stay away from gratuitous nudity. Here I go again—against my own better judgement. The above painting is 24x12 inches, the three below are 20x10.

Bassa girl from Ivory Coast

Pao Cocha, wife of Shipobo Chief, Peru

Sanapana woman, Gran Chaco, Paraguay

R.I.P. James Chance

James Chance, c. 2006

Saddened by the passing of the great James Chance (aka James White, James Siegfried) on June 18th at the age of 71 after a long illness.
 

Een kloddertje roze hier...

 

Hermeto Pascoal, 12"x12", oil on canvas, 2024

Tante Til of the Knots family is always a favorite of mine to reference when teaching painting. Together with Willem de Kooning, Marlene Dumas, and a score of others, I'll show a clip of her in her studio. The nice about it is that the language is Dutch, so I can translate the words Hetty Heyting speaks in any fashion I deem appropriate for the moment and whatever it is in painting I'd like to communicate.

King Pleasure, 12x12

Mose Allison, 16x13

Les Deux Frederics

Frederic Chopin, oil on canvas, 6"x6", 2024

I always wanted to glob on paint like the expressionists did more than a hundred years ago. This one was done in an immediate fashion, wet on wet. I've been enchanted recently by Northern European romanticism, sans the nationalism. In fact I believe (German) expressionism is an extension of romanticism. I don't think I've ever painted Chopin before.

Musica Elettronica Viva, pen and paint on paper, 14"x11", 2024

Drawn in my sketchbook from the image inside the LP The Sound Pool, recorded in 1969 but not released until 1998. I bought that one while in Florence last year. MEV was formed in Rome in 1966 by two Americans who had emigrated there: Alvin Curran and Richard Teitelbaum. The image features Patricia Coaquette, Ivan Coaquette, Franco Cataldi, Alvin Curran, Richard Teitelbaum, and Frederic Rzewski.

Two Eipo girls making a net, 20"x10", oil on canvas

Both paintings come from one single photograph illustrating four Eipo children making a net. On the 6-CD set Musik aus dem Bergland West-Neuguineas are several songs sung by children while making a net. The two in the top 100 were sung by Ginto and Kuto (who are two 11-year-old girls depicted in either the painting above, or below) and by Enento, Yakne, and Toronto. The Eipo live on the Indonesian side of Papua New Guinea.

Two Eipo girls making a net, 20"x10", oil on canvas