This oil on canvas, “The Fighting Cock of Old England Dismays the Armada,” is only one of the 28 beautiful creations by local artist Malcolm Bucknall featured at the d berman gallery until Nov. 24. From Elizabethan-themed work to gothic subjects and cartoonish drawings, Bucknall’s collection depicts magic and transformation, where magic represents life’s mysteries and transformation is the way to amplify human qualities into instant, universal connections.

While there’s an underlying seriousness to Bucknall’s work, ultimately it is light hearted and appears as if out of a fairy tale book. It is reminiscent of the time where you’re a child and things are all so wonderful and strange and magical, Bucknall said. “[Do] you believe in magic?” he sternly asked.

Bucknall does. When Bucknall was a little boy during World War II, he would never enter the back room of his family’s home alone because he was afraid of his family’s big radio set.

He remembers wondering where the voice was coming from and thinking the black netting on the back of the radio looked very much like a witch’s hat. Soon he believed there was a witch inside the radio — one who would come out and get him if he was ever alone in the room with the radio.

“And that’s the way kids are,” Bucknall said. “Imaginative and naive.”

Hung along the white walls of the quaint, intimate space of d berman gallery, the collection of framed drawings and paintings mirror walls of family portraits. Along one wall is an aristocratic, ostrich-headed grandfather slumped in a chair.

The use of animal heads on human bodies is very common, Bucknall said, from minotaurs to Jesus represented as the lamb.

Until this collection, Bucknall had never used an iconic celebrity head on an Elizabethan body. In a gold Baroque frame is musician Willie Nelson as a troubadour.

“It is a little bit of a departure,” Bucknall said. The idea here is ancestry, he said, where someone who is iconic in our culture is the perfect thing to use as an ancestry image for an Elizabethan portraiture.

Bucknall used a 2006 picture of Nelson taken by English photographer Mike Kelly at the South By Southwest music festival.

It’s ironic that Bucknall turned to a musical festival’s picture since on the poster for 1995 Lollapalooza was “The Falling Dog,” a Bucknall painting that was also the cover art for rock band Jesus Lizard’s Down.

This success is only a small part of Bucknall’s resume. A UT graduate and founder [and first president of the UT Student Art Association], Bucknall said he really got into painting when he was 16 and that since then, he has been hooked. Now he paints seven days a week.

“I’m a nut, a maniac, obsessive,” he said.
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WHAT: Malcolm Bucknall
WHERE: d berman gallery, 1701 Guadalupe St.
WHEN: Through Nov. 24; Tuesday - Saturday, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. and by appointment


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