Bob Dylan, revered as a singer, songwriter, author and poet, is also an experienced artist, a new exhibition of his paintings shows.
The Halcyon Gallery in central London has put on display dozens of works by the 67-year-old musician, mainly vibrant versions in water colour and gouache of a series of drawings he created between 1989 and 1992 while on tour and in studios.
The works were published in 1994 in a book called Drawn Blank, and years later Dylan revisited the series after a curator at an art gallery in Chemnitz, Germany, approached him.
The original drawings were digitally scanned and in some cases enlarged before Dylan re-worked them using different colour schemes.
The result is �The Drawn Blank Series,� a collection of everyday scenes including train tracks, portraits, sunflowers, wrecked cars, trucks, still lifes and semi-erotic images of a bare-breasted woman or sisters in various stages of undress.
Dylan has consistently resisted interpreting his work, be it music or art.
Speaking in the 1990s, Dylan explained: �The purpose of my drawings is very undefined. They're very personal drawings.� And in an interview with the Times newspaper to publicize the London show, he said any similarities with other, better known artists was �just by accident and instinctive.�
Dylan also took a swipe at the music industry.
�The music world's a made-up bunch of hypocritical rubbish,� he told the Times. �And the art world? ... Basically, they are who they say they are. They don't pretend. And having been in the music world most of my life, I can tell you it's not that way. Let's just say it's less ... dignified.� Paul Green, president of Halcyon Gallery, said he believed Dylan had captured "life in its everyday grittiness � it is what it is.
�Take the �Train Tracks� series � you look at that image and it is what we all do every day of our lives.�
He likened Dylan's series, with their radically different colour schemes, to Impressionist greats like Claude Monet, who also painted variations on the same theme.
�He (Dylan) is one of the great figures of the 20th century and this is an explosion of artistic creativity. All artists go through it.�
According to Green, a collector plans to buy a large number of Dylan�s originals in order to exhibit them around the world. He would not name the individual.
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