The following feature on the talented Mr. Dennis Gorman was conducted-n-posted by the MC7C duo. Dig what you're reading? Don't copy+paste it elsewhere. Direct link to it!
How long have you been creating?
Well over forty years. (You can get back up off the floor now!) That is hard for me to see on paper. I am a real overnight sensation. Some nights are just a lot longer than others. My night toward fame and fortune is now approaching a half century. I try to do something every day but have only about 3500 drawings and paintings surviving.
What got you started doing art?
Some of my earliest childhood memories originate from trying to draw Sunday Comics with my Dad. Both of my parents were artistic, but my father was also a realist who had just returned from Korea and went to college on the G.I. Bill. He liked making drawings and painting but was beginning a family. As I said earlier, I seem to remember my Dad trying to teach me how to draw by using the Sunday Comics as a reference. This early lesson stuck. He would point to a line on Beetle Bailey or Peanuts with his pencil and have me focus on just that line or segment. He would draw that line and have me do the same. He would direct my attention to the next segment until I had magically reproduced Beetle Bailey. Looking back, I never connected the experiences of Korea with the selection of comics to draw until just now! I was probably three years old at the time, so that was 1958 or so. My mother was also talented. She worked for a photography studio and did colorization of black and white portraits. I used to get into her paints and create Havoc. I knew she would be mad for some reason but she never was mad at me for making "art". My younger brother is an artist as well. He is a painter and a primary reason for me coming from the shadows of anonymity. (Hopefully.)
Describe your work to someone who has never seen it before.
A mixture of Don Martin, R. Crumb, and Ralph Steadman. My art also was greatly influenced by the political art of the 1800s and early 1900s (Thomas Nast comes to mind.). It's a gritty style and very freehand. My watercolors look like something from William Blake or Francis Bacon after an MK Ultra event. If you plan to edit this interview, you could say it looks like editorial cartoons without all that unintelligible writing at the bottom. Some of my material repulses people or disturbs them at a level they often fail to verbalize. I often fail to verbalize my own reaction to something I have done and those are the ones I think people should see.
What do you find visually stimulating right now? Any local artists that we need to keep an eye on?
The smartass kid in me would reply internet porn because I cannot afford live models. The dirty old man in me would reply internet porn because I cannot afford Playboy magazine (Is that still published?). The middle-aged man in me says definitely NOT internet porn because I am still trying to land a Jay Oh Bee and I cannot afford art alone just yet.
I have recently discovered Francis Bacon via the VOOM HD channel which runs some excellent art programming. His post WWII work is just plain spooky as any post-war imagery probably is. My exposure to local artists has been minimal for a variety of reasons. It embarrasses me no names pop to my mind. Due to our environs here, most art is underground unless you are catering to the tourist seaside market. Being my age inhibits blending in with the young artists along with the fact I look like a cop. It's just too hot and humid here to grow long hair and a beard for most of the year.
What other artists or movements inform your work/aesthetics/sensibilities?
I am rather ignorant of movements. I began my own movement about 20 years ago which I have named Past Life Caricatures. Part of that involves drawing what people may have looked like in a past life. It is a glacial movement. I recall how upset the Establishment was when the Pop Art stuff hit the fan. The comic book style paintings and Warhol's satire... I relish change and the effect it has on regular people. I particularly like the effect change has on the controlling or prevalent powers at the point of transition. Artists who come along and shake things up and signal to the world that another point of view is available. Many people have little capacity to handle more than a few different perspectives. I think artists may have the ability or potential to deal with more than a few.
Right now we are dealing with a major change in the creative world. The established hierarchy distains digital art. It threatens them to some degree and I hear things like it is cheating and not real art at all. I bet there was a French Caveman who became ostracized for using vegetable matter to color his wall paintings by the other Cave Artisans. The guy who came up with pencils displaced the charcoal dudes. I am confident Eastman pissed off painters. Technology always introduces new tools and people always find alternative uses for them beyond their original intent. I could not wait for computer tech to catch up to my own visions of how I could employ it. We have it now and its being used to wonderful effect. I have forty years of drawings and photographs to serve as a solid foundation for original and creative digital art. Check that. Original art - plain and simple. The image resulting from your efforts is what should matter. Is it good or not?
As to what affects my sensibilities, well the deluge of material available to someone seeking inspiration is right there ready to spring from a keyboard. MySpace friends linking for example allows me to explore images that interest me in a real flow of consciousness type style which amazes me. (Especially when several hours have passed and you realize its 3am.)
If there were no financial limits whatsoever for you, what constraints would you most like to overstep? Are there other mediums you would explore?
Political Correctness. Gardening/landscaping projects. Home repairs.
If I had the unlimited resources businesses use to purchase beneficial legislation, I would use it to buy enough votes to impeach two really great guys and make sure Nader had at least one day in office as president and make the guy in charge of the FDA swear him in. I would then combine politics and art by tagging the crap out of the White House and have an Andy Jackson-style inauguration party. You would likely find me painting all the bare overpasses in town with a thousand like-minded artists.
Did you grow up in Virginia? (If not, when/why did you move here?)
I am over fifty years old and I often draw cartoons. I do not think many see that as ever having grown up. I take pride and solace in that. I very rarely get paid for those cartoons which prove I am a young rube still. To demonstrate things are relative, my desire to come here was driven by the liberal atmosphere here. I also dig the beach, seafood, and strontium 90. I lived in three different deserts so far and I could not kick sand cold turkey so this place made sense.
Do you do gallery shows?
I would like to do gallery shows again. It has been a long time since my last one. I have a supporter in Italy who has put on several shows in Milan for me and in planning another soon. My brother berates me for not pressing this avenue of promotion. He also has suggested I go bigger in my works. Others close to me have suggested this as well and that may serve as rationale for seeking a show here soon. Are you offering?
What's your favorite piece (at the moment)? Why?
A pencil portrait I did of Richard Nixon in 1970. I recently drew a pen and ink copy of it to practice my hand and eye after working with a lot of multimedia stuff. I needed a return to my strength in the basics. It is also an election year and a flashback to forty years ago when our federal government was nearly as screwed up as it is now. That is a harsh judgment but a fair one. Nixon deserved to be impeached and never pardoned. Clinton perhaps deserved to be served divorce papers but not impeachment. Bush has dissolved most of the Bill of Rights and has run the most inept and corrupt administration we have documentation on. I need to get the fire back to do political stuff again. Bush has just shocked me into inactivity. I am stunned Americans have allowed this to go on for eight years. We have forfeited our place as examples to the world. I doubt a recovery is possible now that the world has seen behind the curtains of our Oz.
The business side of being an artist: how do you market/promote yourself, and does it work? How do you cope?
I really do not have a business side to my art. I suffer the normal Fear many artists have regarding showing material and flogging it. I have done sales jobs in the past and even won awards for the work. But at what cost ? Artists need old-fashioned patrons to free artists for their art. The risk of losing one's soul and dignity is too great. I think what I do is good. Some of it is great and is on par with other famous caricaturists' work. But my needs, my basic needs are being met, food, clothing, shelter, do not depend on sales. It is liberating. It may also be delusional and too safe. Fame brings its own deluge. Crumb has said a lot about this and I chose to avoid that madness at an age when I may not have been able to handle it. I am pretty old now but feel mature enough to face the crowd and its criticisms. Hey, I just like making things. I have 3000 pictures no one has seen. I think in 30 years from now, more will see it than all the years before. Just another guy who made it after he was dead.
Let's have some fun with word association. Give me your immediate feelings on the following (if you've got no discernable feelings, make something up that won't embarrass you in the morning).
Pembroke Area aka Downtown Virginia Beach
oxymoron
The Oceanfront
skin cancer
Granby Street
An oasis from strip malls and interstates
Portfolio Weekly
Issue October 24-30, 2000. They had my picture of me and a plug for a gallery opening on my 45th birthday.
Independent Music Stores / Businesses / Restaurants
Skinnies – I sold a Jimi Hendrix picture to an employee there one afternoon hunting music. I liked the old Bobbywood place and any of the brewpubs are favorites. McCormack's for fish. Ibeza for snacks. There are several great authentic Italian shops where you can get great things…Bella Italia comes to mind…Azars for middle east food…Naro Theater…
Best Venue for art shows
NorVa…I almost talked their former marketing manager to give me space…when I followed up, he had moved to Vegas already. Great acoustics and air handling system!
Best Kept Secret
Until now, Dennis Gorman.
Pungo
Jet noise – the sound of freedom and devalued property.
Favorite Dive Bar
I tried to purchase a former Baptist church for this very same purpose. Glad they nixed the sale. Turns out they were trying to unload a termite factory yet still wanted control over its end-use.
What's the most played song on your iPod ( or an equivalent music playing device ) in the past week?
"Ribs and Whiskey" by Widespread Panic. Played at excessive volume over JBL monitors powered by a phase linear 400 amp.
What came first, the art or the misery? Explain.
Dennis: The misery had to come first. The birthing process! Imagine the opening differential alone, not to mention hormonal disruptions…then of course the forceps left their mark on my cranium… art is not a misery for me – sales are!
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OFFICIAL MYSPACE PAGE!
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