Bob Dylan's 'Drawn Blank Series' 2010 launched

From Castle Galleries Wolverhampton:

WORLDWIDE DEMAND AND CRITICAL ACCLAIM

FOR BOB DYLAN ARTWORK

LEADS TO LAUNCH OF THE DRAWN BLANK SERIES 2010

LIMITED EDITION GRAPHICS HAND-SIGNED BY DYLAN, UNVEILED IN SELECT UKART GALLERIESON SATURDAY 22 MAY 2010

Following worldwide critical acclaim and unprecedented demand for Bob Dylan’s The Drawn Blank Series, Washington Green Fine Art Publishing will present a newly created prestigious collection from the artist on Saturday 22 May 2010 via the Castle Galleries group of art stores. This 2010 collection from The Drawn Blank Series features brand new limited edition graphics, each personally signed by Bob Dylan, taken from drawings he created whilst on the road from 1989 to 1992.

While Bob Dylan has been a committed visual artist for more than four decades, The Drawn Blank Series has cast a vibrant new light on the singular creativity of one of the world’s most important and influential cultural figures. As Marisha Pessl wrote in the New York Times, “In Bob Dylan’s extraordinary collection of paintings, we are given insight into the expressive, unvarnished way this artist approaches the world and reminded ‘he is that rare person who can move effortlessly between music, word, ink and paint….’ Yet again and again, he reflects life back to us with a truth and simplicity that defy words.

“His brush strokes are like his voice, straightforward, rough, occasionally fragile, but always intent on illustrating the treads of human experience. Seemingly unworried about how something looks, he’s not after artistic perfection but something larger, a moment, a feeling. The effect is enthralling.”

These expressive works capture Dylan’s chance encounters and uniquely combine the everyday with the extraordinary and the intimate, personal moments in Dylan’s time. This is achieved through his portraits, interiors, landscapes, still life, nudes and street scenes.

According to Dylan: “I… was just drawing whatever I felt like drawing, whenever I felt like doing it. The idea was always to do it without affection or self-reference, to provide some kind of panoramic view of the world as I was seeing it.”

The Fauves first used non representational colour to convey different sensations – a technique that was potently applied by Warhol during Dylan’s musical ascendency in the 1960s. Dylan’s Warhol-esque touches are now powerfully brought together in this generation of paintings – with richer tones, evocative shades and a depth that brings a great resonance and passion to his work.

Dylan’s decision to create several versions of the same image, using different colours and tones takes the viewer on a fascinating journey. This choice and skill in applying different colour arrangements to the same original drawing enables Dylan to express multiple perceptions of a single idea – hereby creating evolving works of art that engender and draw a wide spectrum of emotion and response from the viewer.

“Every picture spoke a different language to me as the various colours were applied,” Bob Dylan mused.

The collection will be unveiled and available to view in the gallery on Saturday 22^nd May 2010 including a beautiful hardback book (for £39.95) illustrating the extraordinary collection from Bob Dylan. Each piece is published in a limited number of no more than 295 copies worldwide. All are printed on Hahnemühle Museum Etching paper, certificated and personally hand signed by Dylan the artist.

For more information or images please contact:

Gemma Williams Fox

wolverhampton@castlegalleries.com

+ 44 1902 428 312

t: 01902 428 312

e: wolverhampton@castlegalleries.com

w: www.castlegalleries.com

Opening Hours

Monday – Saturday 9.30am – 5.30pm

Sunday 10.30am – 4.30pm

Bob Dylan is one of the most influential and, at times, controversial outspoken figures in the music world of the last five decades. Over the last forty-seven years he has released forty-five albums and written over five hundred songs including Blowin’ in the Wind, The Times They Are A-Changin, Like a Rolling Stone, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door and Make You Feel My Love. Selling over 110 million records around the world, his songs have been covered more than three thousand times by artists as diverse as Sonny and Cher, The Byrds, the Rolling Stones, Duke Ellington, Jimi Hendrix, Keith Jarrett, Guns N’ Roses, Stevie Wonder, Rod Stewart, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bob Marley, Pearl Jam and Neil Young. Bob Dylan’s music has been recognised and honoured with many awards. He received an honorary doctorate of music from Princeton University, New Jersey in 1970 and from St Andrews University, Scotland in 2004. In addition to winning numerous Grammy Awards, his song Things Have Changed from the film Wonder Boys (2000) won him an Academy Award in 2001 and his last album of original music, Together Through Life (2009), entered the charts at number one in the UK and America, and charted in the top five in many other countries around the world.

In April 2008, Dylan received a Special Citation Pulitzer Prize ‘for his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power’. He released a global bestselling album of Christmas standards, Christmas In The Heart, in October 2009, from which all artist royalties were donated to charities fighting hunger and homelessness around the world.

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