Paul Warren: You’re absorbing the images through mass media, so how can they not filter into your work?

Paul Warren is an artist and illustrator with an interest in surrealism and abstract art. He works in a variety of different mediums, including collage. Paul's work has been published by Dumpster Fire Press, The Odd Magazine and Word Vomit Zine.  He has online galleries at Deviant Art and Instagram. He lives in Daventry, England.

You live in the town of Daventry, Northamptonshire, in England. What is the art scene like in England these days? What is the support for visual art? Is there a fair bit of regionalism?

I think the art scene in England is pretty staid these days. It only exist in most people’s lives when Banksy sprays something on a wall somewhere.  All of the big exhibitions are London-based, with a corporate sponsor. From time to time something interesting will pop up in an independent gallery away from the capital. I usually find out about these after the event. National media focus only on the big exhibitions: Monet or Hockney, for example. Living here these things easily pass you by! So yes, I think there is some regionalism. There have been attempts to revive the Art Lab idea in some areas, including Northampton. There are people creating art locally but few opportunities.

Thankfully I have a day job. I would never make a living out of art, wouldn’t want to, it’s far too precarious. I also have the freedom to produce what I want.

When did you first start making art? What artists inspired you when you started out, and what artists inspire you now?

I started making art as a child, drawing mainly. I do remember being obsessed with the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album artwork. I spent virtually an entire school holiday producing Sgt Pepper-inspired drawings and paintings. It was the colour that amazed me. This was the late 70s, early 80s, in Northamptonshire ‒ there didn’t seem to be a lot of colour about then ! At about this time my eyes were opened to abstract art. The art teacher at my high school, I’d have been about 14 , sent me into a storeroom to collect some paintbrushes. On the wall there was a print of ‘Cossacks’ by Kandinsky. That blew me away. I didn’t know art could be like that. The most modern thing I’d seen up until then was a print of Seurat’s ‘Bathers at Asniéres’.

The Catch

My intention upon leaving school was to study art, but this didn’t work out and I became disillusioned with art and stopped painting and drawing as I didn’t see the point.

When I was about 19, though, I discovered a copy of Patrick Waldberg’s Surrealism. This had a massive impact on me. This led to discovering Dalí. Dalí was to me, then, the greatest artist ever. I couldn’t get enough of his work.

I started painting surreal landscapes featuring faceless ballerinas, elongated tables, jugglers on stilts, human faces buried in walls, mannequins and of course cypress trees.

This led to me collecting anything I could find on Surrealism. I was also taking an interest in Futurism and Impressionism at that time.

Another chance discovery was Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. I couldn’t believe that book, staggering, full of these images that just threw themselves at you, written by someone who seemingly didn’t care. Major influence. Forty or fifty books in and he’s still having the same impact.  The cut-ups were a revelation. He was a genius with that. There is a richness and beauty to the prose that a lot of people just don’t get.

Through Burroughs I came to the work of Brion Gysin. Incredible talent and who’s heard of him, compared with Burroughs? Very few people.

Another artist whose work means a lot to me is Emmy Bridgwater, the British surrealist. She didn’t produce a huge amount of work but what she did produce was mesmerising. Her painting ‘Night work is about to commence’ is astounding.

Innocence Lost

An artist whom I’ve returned to recently is Stanley Donwood, best known for his work with Radiohead. The work he produced with Thom Yorke in the early 2000s is very inspiring.  It has a questioning, almost anarchic, edge to it. Very powerful work.

I’ve always been influenced by writers. A passage from a book or a lyric from a song often triggers something. Lately this has become more apparent.  For instance I’ve been collaborating with the writer Stephen Michael Whitter, producing the artwork for a new edition of his book Tales Deceptively Honest. The artwork combines images of mainly derelict buildings with Stephen’s text, incorporating drawings, collage and digital artwork.

The book is due to be published by Dumpster Fire Press in November.

And of course I’ve made a couple of pieces based on your work. One of these, ‘Each step backward erases each step taken’, was interesting as it led me on to do a small series of astronaut-based pictures. One of them, ‘Astronaut on a deserted Street’, was used by Ryan Quinn Flanagan for the cover of his recent book Fowler’s Revenge.

I produced a series of paintings heavily influenced by this period under a pseudonym The Watchman. I’d read the Djuna Barnes novel Nightwood and I got the name from the ‘Watchman, what of the night ?’ section of the book. The British surrealist artist Conroy Maddox also used that title for one of his most famous collages, which I later discovered.

The Watchman artwork had titles like ‘Mannequin Genocide’, ‘The Last museum’, ‘The Great Illusion’, ‘Radio Nudes’, ‘The Forgotten season’, and ‘Blood sports in the morning’. The choice of title was very important to me at that time.

You tend to work in collage, but what other mediums do you use? What is your approach to making art?

I am working mainly in collage at the moment, both hand cut and digital. It’s a time-constraint thing as well. For the work I’m producing at the moment collage is the only way to get these ideas out. It’s also allowing me to incorporate text into the artwork, something I’d been trying to do for years.

The purpose of luxury

I have a technique for layering the collages, which combines hand cutting and digital montage, which seems to work well.

I prefer to paint if I have the time. I use acrylic, watercolour, oil, as well as pastels and pencils. When I paint I use very traditional techniques. The ideas tend to come quick, so I tend to work quite fast. I rarely work from sketches, so what you see is, generally, the first idea put down. Not ideal, but I can’t do it any other way.

Some of your artworks comment on political issues, such as the invasion of Ukraine, or on UK politics. What do you see as the role of the artist in today’s society?

This is a fairly recent thing for me. I was appalled by the Ukraine war and initially produced an image of Putin with a clowns nose and hair, with something offensive written across his forehead in Russian. A few people liked this, so I had it made into a T-shirt design and tried to sell it through an online site. The intention was that anything I made would be donated to the Ukraine appeal. I sold a handful of these, then the site took them down. They were inappropriate, apparently.

Rouge

I posted about this on my Facebook page and Mike Zone, who is the editor for Dumpster Fire Press, got in touch. He’d brought one of these T-shirts and was shocked by the site’s action.

He was in the process of putting together a new anthology titled World on Fire and offered to use my Putin artwork. This opened the floodgates for me and I sent Mike god knows how much Putin/Ukraine/anti-monarchy/anti-capitalist artwork.

Most of which appears in the book. The book later became World on Fire: Propagandie ,with proceeds going to the Ukraine appeal. So, a big thanks to Mike for that.

I would hope that any artist is touched by world events such as the war in Ukraine. From my point of view, you’re absorbing the images through mass media, so how can they not filter into your work?

The big figures from the years of punk have either passed on or have gone very quiet. Do you think punk it still relevant today, if not more relevant than ever?

Yes, I think it is still relevant. The ability to shock has largely gone, owing to the fact the world moves on and we’ve seen it all before. But the punk attitude and aesthetic lives on. The music is very relevant, particularly in Britain at the moment. There is a Liverpool-based poetry zine called Word Vomit, which carries on the punk aesthetic. Kate Floss who runs it has been kind enough to accept some of my text-based work. It’s DIY publishing ‒ I love that sort of thing.

Unncessary Atrocities

They do a lot of open-mic nights too. It’s the punk thing of just getting out there and doing it.

The punk aesthetic is something that I looked to last summer, for a series of alternative Queen’s Jubilee ‘stamp’ designs. These were based on a portrait of the Queen, satirical in nature and incorporated cut-up text made from media coverage, song lyrics and TS Eliot, as well as a bit of social comment on my part!

Jamie Reid was the big influence for the idea. Also David King, who did a lot of the artwork for Crass.

I was impressed with your series about the murdered actress Sharon Tate. In a way it reminded me of Warhol’s Monroe portraits, as well as his Death and Disaster series. Was Warhol in any way an influence?

They do share some similarities, not intended though. I’ve been looking at a lot of Eastern European collage and photomontage, notably the Polish artist Janusz Maria Brzeski and his ‘Birth of a Robot’ series. I didn’t realise until I started researching Sharon Tate how iconic her image could be. I say ‘could be’, as it’s been overshadowed by Manson. He took that from her. The series was intended to redress that , to take back her image. There were meant to be 10 or 12 images in the series, but it’s spiralled a bit and at the last count I had 45 pieces.

What is your opinion of outsider art? I admire outsider art tremendously, but I can’t help but feel it is becoming a sort of style.

It’s becoming big business. The Tate had a big outsider art exhibition a while back. Scottie Wilson,  the surrealist, is a good example of an outsider being brought into the mainstream, setting him up with an exhibition in a gallery and while the show was going on he was selling his artwork outside a pub around the corner for the price of a pint! Wilson had been selling his art from the back of a van before that.

Roland Penrose tried to bring him into the surrealist fold, but Wilson was treading his own path. That’s often the case with outsider art ‒ by its nature it’s different, often idiosyncratic, and generally has little commercial appeal, well, at least at the time it’s being produced.

Awkward Continents

I believe you are working with Mike Zone on a collaborative novel. Can you tell us a bit about this?

Yes, it’s to be called Dead Star: Control.  The initial inspiration was the Sharon Tate artwork we discussed earlier.  Obviously I can’t say too much at this point about the plot except that it’s a Burroughsian /Philip K Dick sci-fi thing that explores a lot of the themes surrounding the Tate murder. Mk Ultra, conspiracy theories, that sort of thing. Some of the Tate artwork will be in the book. It’s interesting, as when this idea developed, the artwork was influenced by the plot and vice versa. That’s what I find exciting ‒ the role chance plays in the process. Having a loose idea and just seeing where it leads.

Dead Star should see the light of day later this year or 2024.

We’ve collaborated before on Mike’s chapbook Fuck You: A Fucking Poetry Chap. That was great fun. The illustrations weaved around Mike’s text. It seemed to work quite well.

I also provided the Cover artwork for Mike’s latest book, Wonderful Turbulence.

Another book project that I worked on was a collaboration with both Mike and the poet Shannon Lynette, titled Razorville.

It was really interesting to see how the words and images ‘collided’ as the book developed: text influencing artwork, artwork influencing text.

Razorville was published earlier this year by Dumpster Fire Press.

Milk and Honey

What do you see as the future of art in England?

Interesting question. I’m not seeing anything inspiring coming out of the mainstream art world. The problem is it’s all about sales and profit. Everything I see that is inspiring, a little bit different, is online. There are a lot of people like myself who need to create art ‒ it’s about searching for something different. I don’t really take an interest in contemporary art anymore. Everything is too commercial, too safe, too nice.

Where’s the fun in that?

This interview originally appeared in The Odd Magazine.

Armando Fragale: Completely autonomous

Armando Fragale is a multifaceted artist born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1985. He is a painter, illustrator, filmmaker, actor, musician, writer, poet, designer, and producer who works in various mediums. He developed the artistic technique called Drivage and founded the art movement Openism. He has shown his work all over the world and has also collaborated with a wide array of artists in various art forms. Notable exhibitions he has been involved in have been Cosmic Unity: Occult Art and Music in Latin America in New York, International Surrealism Exhibition in Cairo/Saint-Cirq-Lapopie and The Cabinet of the Solar Plexus: The Liminal and the Marvellous, in Dublin. He also runs a record label Wraith Productions, which he started in 2005.

DH: I believe you were already drawing when you were a child. Do you remember when you first started? Have you had any formal art training?

AF: It all came about so early on as a child, and it all started with drawing from the moment I picked up a pencil. I’ve had formal art training at university, but I chose my own path in all of this with what I do, so I consider myself a self-taught artist.

Astral Connection, 2013

You have a strong interest in pre-Colombian art, but I have also detected a similarity of imagery in your work to that of Voodoo glyphs. Do you feel an affinity with the idea of the artist as shaman?

These all come through in the imagery as an atavistic channel in my work, it gets pulled in from that state and is manifested. I have a real interest in the cultures you mention, including ancient Egypt, ancient Sumer, and so many other civilizations. I knew from day one that the artist works as a shaman.

Surrealism also seems to be an influence in your work, but more Mexican surrealism than European – particularly Leonora Carrington. Why does her work appeal to you?

I’ve been very much fond of Mexican Surrealism but it all started for me in the beginning with my introduction to European surrealism mostly, artists and visionary thinkers such as André Breton and Philippe Soupault, as well as Eileen Agar and Meret Oppenheim. Since the day I discovered her work, Leonora has been an inspiration to me. I constantly felt the energy transcending through her work and it magnetized me. This is something I also experienced at an early age when meeting Eartha Kitt.

Beyond the veil, 2020

Do you get inspiration from the natural world – such as rock or tree formations?

I especially find inspiration through the frequencies in the natural world. And my belief is it all works together, is interconnected whether it is a rock, a tree, a spring, the formations gathered, a complete morphology and it plays into the world of my work.

What medium do you generally work in? Your work tends to be either black and white, or coloured acrylics on black cardboard. What is your process when making art?

To manifest, I utilize anything and everything at the fingertips. It can be a pencil on canvas or paint on glass, I have free rein in the sense of what route I will take with the work. The black and white drawings were earlier incarnations that spanned through my whole career. The coloured acrylics on black cardboard are sort of a series of works called The Black Period. My process is completely autonomous. I am in a channelled state when I work and what is meant to come through will and gets manifested. It all gets pulled from an atavistic point and is alchemically aligned and by how that will be orchestrated to the voyeur.

You said you created a movement called Openism – please tell us about this.

Openism is based on the creative process and by how we manifest art through the mind and the spirit, how to keep everything open in every function of the creative processes and to have no limits or restraints on the one who the creator of that vision, it is totally a boundless way to create. And essentially, to never have a beautifully dreamed-up vision to be tainted by any means. 

Expanse of the amalgam, 2021

A good reference would be to think of Surrealism and how the Surrealists embraced the subconscious, how it was very free and open in the creational aspects for all the artists involved and how it opened doors and new views. One thought that always stuck with me was that Man Ray wanted to see artists take Surrealism but not follow it, but to understand it and opened new doors to take it further. I found that most inspirational and I believe he was right, we need more of these doors to open up in the arts and to take it to new heights. I also developed an artistic technique called Drivage, which is to create a work of art while the human body is in motion. To get a visual picture of its under-workings, think of someone attached to a car while they are holding a canvas and a paintbrush, wet with red paint, directly touching the canvas, as they move in motion with the force of the vehicle ‒ that is the magic of Drivage.

You also have a deep interest in experimental cinema, with filmmakers such as Kenneth Anger and Maya Deren. But you also like off-beat horror movies, such as those by Mexican film maker Juan López Moctezuma. Is it the magical or surrealist aspect of such movies that appeal to you? Have you yourself made films?

For me these artists were paving the way and creating very rich works of cinema, very realistic because they did what they purely wanted and didn’t follow anything else. They will forever inspire everyone who takes an interest in film or wants to be a filmmaker or even an artist in a general sense.

Still from the short from, 'Time', 2018

 For me both the magical and the surrealist aspects call me to those filmmakers and their works. I have made films, mostly shorts, I have a new short film in editing at the moment called Veiled Vision, which is based in shadows and features the architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright. There is also a feature film I am working on, based on a series of dreams I had and visions that came to me.

You also have a music production business – is this your ‘bread and butter’? For how long have you had the business and what kind of music do you produce?

I have been working in the music industry for over a decade now as one of my main gigs, so to say, yes, but it’s always been my passion and love, like cinema and art. I also run my own record label, Wraith Productions, which has seen a wide array of eclectic artists, and I’ve produced and collaborated with all these artists as well. Producing bands and also playing in them throughout the years has been a very fun and rewarding experience. Most of the music ranges from metal to rock to electronic and even hip-hop, and now I am dabbling in original motion picture soundtrack projects and have been working closely with an amazing Argentinian band called Farmacia.

You participated in an exhibition recently that was organised by The Cabinet of the Solar Plexus, called The Luminal and the Marvellous. There were some big names in that exhibition, such as Carrington, Toyen, Friedrich Schröder Sonnenstern and that curious occult artist, Austin Osman Spare. What was the response to the exhibition?

The response to that show was absolutely incredible! It’s monumental every time Dolorosa de la Cruz envisions and does one of them with The Cabinet of the Solar Plexus. I was truly honoured to be a part of it this year. One of the best exhibitions you’ll ever see not only for the esoteric or dark arts but for art’s sake as a whole.

The igneous one, 2021

Where do you see your work fitting in with contemporary US art as whole, or is it something you never think about?

I follow my own path in what I do, and it fits as it already is, it is never something that crosses my mind. What I do appreciate about the contemporary art realm as a whole is that it is so vast and wide open to the voyeur, you’ll find all kinds of art and artists that lie within it, and I’m referring to worldwide, not just in the US. My work is there for all the masses to experience.

What projects are you busy with at the moment?

My feature film is the largest project I am currently undertaking. I am also going to return to my Mirror and Astral series in a new way, I’m still exploring the realms of the Black Period as it goes. I have exhibitions of my works and screenings of my films planned throughout 2023. I am also working on a book collaboration with the artist Giorgia Pavlidou, so keep an eye out for that one. 

The voyeur, 2015

There’s been some meshing of worlds in the form of collaborations I’ve been doing over the last few years with other artists in painting and drawing, some of these will get published. One of the first notable ones is with the artist Brian Lucas, and I will be doing many more of these collaborations. I’ve been writing a concept on Surrealists for the modern day that entails the likes of Alejandro Jodorowsky, Fernando Arrabal, Pedro Freideberg, Kenneth Anger, Aube Elléouët Breton, Penelope Rosemont, Françoise Gilot, among others, the next stage would be to make it a documentary feature film at some point. 

The multifaceted artist P. Emerson Williams and I will be collaborating on some things in music and film, first will come the music projects and then he will be acting in my feature film, he is a visionary and I am looking forward to working closely with him. I’ve also been designing clothes and will soon launch my fashion clothing line which will feature my work.

I'm working on the first volume of a series of books called ATOM. It will be a monumental literary project once it's completed. It will feature creative minds of all forms within. It will truly be the first of its kind. There is also a project I am working on with the amazing artist jennifer jazz, who was a sister to Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Finally, a book of my writings will be published soon. 

This interview originally appeared in The Odd Magazine 24.