| |
Malcolm Bucknall
can tell you how to annoy him. "One of the worst things is being asked, 'What is that supposed to mean?' " complains the 66-year-old artist. "I think it's necessary to suspend disbelief. By doing so, you keep all your options open."
And if you want to perplex him, ask Bucknall why he paints anthropomorphic animals -- creatures like Victorian children with cats' heads, an Edwardian dandy with a deer's head or a baby with a turtle's head.
"What surprises me is that people are surprised by it," he says. Bucknall points out that anthropomorphism populates cartoons, comics, children's stories, fairy tales and folklore. And he mentions the historical precedent: Greek mythology has the Minotaur, the Furies and centaurs. Ancient Egypt had the sphinxes and a pantheon of animal-headed gods. "It's so . . . common," he says. "The anthropomorphic depiction of animals is a much more direct way of dealing with human feelings rather than dealing with a whole human being. Because human beings are so many different things, they become inscrutable. But you give them a dog's head or a cow's head and you've got this thing that fits together and tells a story. Not many stories with many possibilities, but one story."
Judging by appearances, Bucknall's life may not be common, but it's not overly weird, either. One morning last week, he answers the door of his newish house in the Shoal Creek neighborhood with his wife, Carolyn, a retired UT librarian, and their granddaughter Holly. The brown-haired Holly is sick and spending the day with her obviously doting grandparents.
From the threshold of the Bucknall's spotlessly tidy home, there's a perfect view of "Old Indian and White Poodle." The oil painting of two seated figures is in the style of Rembrandt -- with a bizarre twist. The female figure draped in ornate period dress has the head of a white poodle. She looks kindly at the figure next to her, a Native American man wrapped in a blanket, gently touching his shoulder. "Old Indian and White Poodle" was used as the cover illustration of "Puss/Oh the Guilt," a 1993 joint release by indie rock bands The Jesus Lizard and Nirvana.
"When kids collecting signatures for GreenPeace, or whatever, come to the door, they immediately recognize the painting," Bucknall says.
By appearances, the mild-mannered British-born Bucknall is an unlikely indie rock cover artist. But "Old Indian and White Poodle" is just one of three of his paintings that The Jesus Lizard, who are Chicago-based but have Austin roots, have used for their CDs. "Allegory of Death" decorated "Liar," and "Falling Dog" was used for "Down," which garnered Bucknall a Best Artwork of 1994 award from the music magazine Alternative Press.
In the 38 years that Bucknall has been a full-time professional artist, he has received a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship, sold his work to public collections and exhibited widely. Born in Twickenham, UK, Bucknall landed in Austin in 1958, following his father who had taken a position with UT's school of engineering. This was after Bucknall had spent two years at Chelsea School of Art, after he had done his mandatory military service (during which he was stationed in Cyprus) and after studying art at the University of Viswa-Bhrati in India. Bucknall finished his undergraduate degree in art at UT, then picked up an MFA from the University of Washington.
Now, he has the first exhibit of his work in three years, which opened last week at
d berman Gallery.
Two days before the opening, he leads the way through his house and back to the two-story garage, the first floor of which houses a white Volvo station wagon. The second floor is Bucknall's light-filled studio. He is in the midst of packing up 14 drawings and seven oil paintings, which he will load into the Volvo and deliver to the gallery. At the top of stairs are two sturdy liquor boxes, each of which hold seven of Bucknall's small ink drawings, neatly framed and matted. Bucknall has packed the pictures facing each other and, so the glass and frames won't scratch, he has separated each pair with carefully cut rectangular pieces of foam board.
In fact Bucknall's entire studio is tidy -- terribly, deeply tidy. A cabinet holds jars of incredibly fine-bristle brushes. Books neatly line a shelf in one corner. They are thick, hard-bound volumes of catalogue raisonnés of Rembrandt, Ingres, Poussin and Titian. But then there's also the "All Color Book of Insects," "The Pictorial Encyclopedia of Dogs," "Splendors of the Universe" and "Victorian Children." Boxes hold trimly organized files of pictures culled from all manner of magazines and books.
"The way that I get ideas is to go through pictures and start putting things together," he says. And those things might be an Ingres portrait of an elegantly attired noblewoman and an Audubon portrait of an egret and a photograph of a pointy-faced Afghan hound.
"I make pencil drawings, adjust images to the right scale and superimpose them onto each other until I find something that gives me this feeling -- almost a physical feeling -- and then I know I've come upon something." Bucknall renders everything with an almost inconceivable precision. If he's copying an image from a photograph, what he paints looks just like a photograph. If he's copying a Rembrandt setting, the scene he paints has the same quality and texture as one by Rembrandt.
Bucknall's new paintings signify a departure from his previous work. For the past three years, Bucknall has been terribly fascinated by outer space and the deep sea. His paintings at
d berman chart a fantastical cosmos populated by creatures that are part lizard, part fish or part lizard, part armadillo. Or a Venus-like woman with a turtle head. Fruits and vegetables swirl around like stars and planets. In "Oh, This Wonderful World (Ugli Fruit)" a cherub of a baby crowned with a flower garland rides an ugli fruit while peppers, brussels sprouts and mushrooms float around.
"Alice Through the Hubble Space Telescope," offers Bucknall by way of explanation.
But no, that's not an explanation.
Says Bucknall: "Mystery is my religion."
You may contact Jeanne Claire van Ryzin at jvanryzin@statesman.com or 445-3699.
Back to previous page.
|
|
