Renowned British artist Graham Dean’s new book “Strange Beauty,” featuring many of his celebrated works along with unreleased paintings, is being released as a Deluxe Edition Box Set with Book & DVD that includes an unreleased soundtrack by music legend Peter Gabriel.
Graham Dean transmits an essential part of the emotions and psychological states of his characters whether they be beautiful models, athletes, crazy bondage enthusiasts, identical twins, people with skin imperfections, – all using their bodies as vehicles of expression.
He is essentially a painter of identity. But more than the identity of the body, it is the identity of the soul as evoked by these sumptuous watercolours. Like Egon Schiele who was researching in mental hospitals to study his subjects, Graham Dean loves these oddball characters who voluntarily use their bodies often in extreme situations. His images are recomposed in a creative alchemy, mixing people, body parts and time itself. Although the works are representational, they escape the illustrational to reach a universal form from something deeply personal. He has also used buildings, mysterious ships, confessionals in churches, forests, trains, to enhance these atmospheric moods.
Using a technique he calls “reverse archaeology,” Graham Dean re-invents the traditional uses of watercolour resulting in a unique technique. Contrasting layers of paint are applied separately on thick, handmade paper from Southern India. Each sheet has undergone a process of tearing and overlapping to create a final composition, this corresponds to the multiple layers of the epidermis which protects the human body. The process is organic and cyclical, the paintings appear fragmented and destroyed using sections (front and back) that lead to a renaissance in the form of a new composition. Adapted from an article by Galerie Maubert, Paris. September 2011
“Undercurrents” is a 14 minutes instrumental piece that was written and recorded by Peter Gabriel in 1981, originally as the ambient soundtrack for a short film made for an exhibition by artist Graham Dean. Peter allegedly recorded the music in one day. This is his first soundtrack, ahead of “Birdy,” “The Last Temptation of Christ” and “Long Walk Home.” Peter supplied the music, in return for an original painting by Graham. This was Graham’s second film funded by the Arts Council. Dean, a pioneer in early video technology, shot “Undercurrents” on 16mm film featuring a series of images and live action footage and then manipulated. The film was shown on “Riverside” a BBC arts TV show.
Graham said about the recording of the soundtrack, “We were supposed to go into the studio for the afternoon for a few hours, but we ended up leaving at 6.00 am the following morning.”
When the people at Real World were looking for the master tape for “Undercurrents” they actually found the multi-tracks after 40 years! The music was re-mixed at the end of last year in the main studio at Real World and the remix version sounds AMAZING! The music has been described as dark and atmospheric, even ‘Birdy’-like at times.”
In regards to his new book Graham explains, “I have been painting and exhibiting since 1973 so naturally I had a large body of works to choose from when making a selection for this book. I was keen to include some of which have never been published before alongside the latest paintings, several fresh out of the studio. All the paintings are watercolour or watercolour with a few added elements like dye or stained glass paint though I’m now reluctant to use anything else but watercolour. The papers are either Arches or an Indian rag paper from Southern India. The rags which make up the Indian papers when pulped are recycled garments -mostly western t-shirts I’ve been told.”
