David Bowie - a Rock Legend
Updated: Nov 13, 2022
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'The metamorphic life of Davy Jones' - The life and music of David Bowie
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The is a painting on the life and music of David Bowie.
The first canvas was to be the pre-Ziggy era. This canvas portrays a heady giddy time, late 60's feel, a time of great creativity, and a fond era in the artist's life.
The second canvas would be the persona years of Bowie's life - Ziggy, Aladin Sane and the Thin White Duke. It was a time where he rocketed to stardom.
The third canvas is his post alter ego years.
Each canvas effortlessly flows into the next, as each stage of the Artit's life unfolds.
The following are some of the elements included in the painting, there are many more and can be found in the book.
In the little windows we can see David in his pre Bowie years. Things that happened in his earlier years are depicted here.
There are references to his outrageous outfits and his musical lyrics.
Major Tom appears inside the metal Telescope. This points directly towards the planet Earth on the second canvas and is in direct correlation to the Space Oddity lyrics 'Planet Earth is blue and there's nothing I can do'.
This completes the first canvas and the spider is the bridge to the next.
The second canvas is all about David's character creations.
Starting with Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
The band members as the actual spiders with their instruments. The metal spider represents David, it has ball bearings for eyes and one is larger than the other.
The story of the Ziggy's character is a tale of a Starman and how the infinites jump from black hole to black hole. Here, inspired by the unique make up of his pupils (one is fixed in dilation due to an accident in his youth).The two black holes reflect their composition. At the end of Ziggy's life the infinites rip him to pieces and so we see this at the end of the yellow brick road.
We now move to the last canvas. This moves past David's facades.
At this time we have allusions to his film and acting career as well as his music.
The clown is dragging a bath with the elephant man in it down the stairs. In the bath are a few phallic images: When David played the elephant man on stage, in one of the scenes he was naked in a bath. The stage crew (wanting to have fun with David) used to fill the bath with pornography and paraphernalia.
The many stairs relate towards the film 'Labyrinth' as does the image of Bowie later on, appearing to hold the moon in his hand. For most of my generation we all remember him as the Goblin king.
Updated book coming soon : The Metamophic life of Davy Jones. The book that explains the surreal David Bowie painting. Complete with up close photos and sketches. Follow the journey I take into making one of my paintings.