EXHIBIT: NICK BLINKO: SKELETON SCRATCHES

Sept. 21-25

In between intricate, labour-intensive illustrations and paintings, reclusive Rudimentary Peni frontman Nick Blinko likes to draw skeletons. He has drawn hundreds of them over the past decade, on napkins, postcards, scrap paper. Here he shares with us 30+ hand-selected skeleton ink drawings, marking the first time any of his work has been exhibited in Canada.

Artist Statement:

All these skeletons are still. Yet they may seem to be, in most cases, in motion. Like skeletons out of anatomical etchings in life like poses but with far different intentions. Black bones with gemstones, made of night sky. The building blocks of humans gone far astray. Much of the movement portrays downtrodden individuals, whilst for others mad dance or even on one occasion a manic escape attempt from their very incarnation has befallen them.

But mainly rarely constraining against the white imprisoning surroundings nor do any interlopers enter the domain, the skulls and bone bodies are deprived of props. Stacked up in the sketchbook, they were in a mass grave one atop the other. Now they have more freedom, wandering walls. En masse the skeletal army is not in unison. All locked into their own private individual hell. However they are unknowing of their united appearance , even purpose, presenting as skeleton crew. Or is it merely the odyssey of a single entity varying in form within its own limitations?                

“In the case of British artist Nick Blinko (b.1961), who has in the past been hospitalised, the need to make pictures is stronger than the desire for the psychic 'stability' brought by therapeutic drugs which adversely affects his ability to work. His images are constructed of microscopically detailed elements, sometimes consisting of literally hundreds of interconnecting figures and faces, which he draws without the aid of magnifying lenses and which contain an iconography that places him in the company of the likes of Bosch, Bruegel and the late Goya. These pictures produced in periods when he was not taking medication bring no respite from the psychic torment and delusions from which he suffers. In order to make art, Blinko risks total psychological exposure.” (Colin Rhodes , Outsider Art : Spontaneous Alternatives)

Nick Blinko is represented by The Henry Boxer Gallery