Working on projects with Clive, we spend as much time as we can with him in LA as there’s so much more you can achieve in person over a mug of tea than via video calls from here in London!
On our latest trip, we were delighted to uncover a work that had been feared lost in recent property moves…
In the summer of 1993, Clive was commissioned to travel to New York to create a huge painted backdrop in the space of just 48 hours for the opening of the Light, Wisdom and Sound nightclub on West 29th Street. As he says even now, ‘How could I refuse?!’
Together with some helping hands mixing colours for him, he painted Shaman: The Metaphysics of Light, Wisdom and Sound, a huge loose canvas which was hung as a backdrop against the walls of the club. At the opening event Allen Ginsberg blessed the painting with an invocation on its midnight unveiling (see Jill Abrams’s footage here!)
Clive’s clear memories of meeting the great beat poet and a host of interesting characters that night are married with the frenzy of painting something so large in such a short space of time – all of which came to the fore as we unearthed the canvas and unfurled it for the first time in fourteen years, since its appearance at the Zoomen event at the Bert Green Galley in Los Angeles.
Neighbours stopped on the street as we unrolled it, startled by its sheer size and by the vivid colours which have not been dimmed by time, and Clive got to re-visit his painting, astonished by its clarity and the imagery which has followed on into works which he has made many years later.
(with thanks to Roman for clambering up on the garden wall to get the best angles for photographs!)