Despite primarily working with death and grind metal artists, Dan Seagrave's influential works are also key in inspiring this project. Seagrave became notorious for his intensely detailed surrealist landscape work, such as for his painting for the band Entombed's 1990 release 'Left Hand Path', and during the same year, Nocturnus's album 'The Key'.
I already had seen a large amount of his work because of my passion for extreme metal music, however upon digging deeper I found a series of figurative works that Seagrave describes as 'not exactly pretty' which he created over the course of 2002. One painting in particular caught my attention, which was a 4' by 6' acrylic on canvas piece titled 'Walking The Skin'. The figure in it is distorted and almost melts into the background, implying that it is 'emerging' from it. Earthy colours highlight the pallid skull of the entity, whose head loosely faces the viewer upon their androgynous body.
This painting really inspired me for a number of reasons, one of which was the use of lighting. There is a light source, not in frame, that is to the top right of the painting. It highlights the top of the entity's head, the right side of their body, and the top of their right arm. It highlights the skin tone of the entity which allowed Seagrave to imply, rather than outright realistically portray, areas of bone and tendon. I thought this was fascinating, and would like to explore depicting more macabre subjects with subtetly through form and tone management.
The earthy coulours are visceral, and remind me of both the human body and metal corroding over time. Also, due to Seagrave's mark making technique, it appears as if there is a scratched-up foreground which reminded me of an old photograph. I would like to experiment with these colours as I feel it would appropriately and successfully allow me to portray my own disturbing subject matter, however I will adjust my approach so my work fits more into traditional black metal aesthetics.
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