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xpuigc-bloc · 7 days ago

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COLOSSAL

“Unearthing Buried Gods.” Michael McGrath

Michael McGrath Summons Symbolism and a Folk Art Style in Expressive Paintings

November 6, 2024

Art

Kate Mothes

From fanged cats and all-seeing ravens to anthropomorphized botanicals and disembodied faces, Michael McGrath’s uncanny works nod to the symbol-rich, flat compositions of folk art or “naïve” painting. His mixed-media works combine materials like graphite, oil paint and oil stick, ink, and acrylic on a variety of surfaces, including wood, canvas, and burlap.

Inspired by the expansive scenes of contemporary artists Peter Doig and Mamma Andersson, and self-taught artists Henry Darger (1892-1973) and William Hawkins (1895-1990), McGrath harnessed a narrative approach in his own practice. “I decided to experiment with figures and storytelling in my painting,” he tells Colossal. He also counts Jim Henson among his influences.

“Threats and competition for tiny vampires” (2023), graphite, colored pencil, and India ink on wood panel, 14 x 11 inches

Populated with an array of characters, from trees with alarmed expressions to tiny, fairy-like black critters with bulbous wings and long legs, McGrath delves into mysterious, emotional tales with plots as enigmatic as they are supernatural.

The artist’s interest in painting evolved from an early fascination with design, especially album covers and advertising in magazines like Spin and Thrasher. “I never had the patience to develop classical skills, so I focused on dimensional and collage work for a while, until I eventually decided to invest more time in painting,” he says.

McGrath’s work will be part of an online group show with MePaintsMe, Slight of Hand, which opens on November 12. In February, he will also have pieces on view in a group show at Court Tree Collective in Brooklyn.

“Monster control, future systems No. 3,” (2024), acrylic, oil stick, and oil on canvas, 78 x 120 inches

“Night float, threat window” (2024), oil and oil stick on canvas, 60 x 48 inches

“Hunting songs” (2024), oil, oil stick, and grease pencil on linen, 30 x 24 inches

“Muppet moon nightmare choir” (2024), acrylic, acrylic yarn, embroidery thread, painted canvas, and burlap on burlap, 40 x 30 inches

“Moon float” (2024), acrylic, watercolor crayon, enamel, and oil pastel on canvas, 60 x 48 inches

“Stories to frighten your children with and dangerous literature” (2023), oil, oil pastel, and acrylic on linen, 30 x 40

“Cat song, moon riot, No. 2” (2024), oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches

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chantsdemarins · 2 years ago

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🥵"Find Tom" (Part 1)

(Tom Hiddleston X Reader)

Well, I wasn't going to write another Tom fic, but I am weak. This one is honorary for the 14 Days of Valentine's Day Community project from @muddyorbsblr

It’s suggestive in Part 1, things heat up in Part 2

Maybe interested:

@lovelysizzlingbluebird @lokisgoodgirl (I risk tagging you I know lol 😂) @tbhiddlestan83 @peaches1958 @mygfloki @huntress-artemiss @coldnique @simplyholl @mochie85 @fictive-sl0th @goblingirlsarah @carlym @mjsthrillernp @i-stand-with-loki @filthyhiddles @wolfsmom1 @fantasyfan4life @jennyggggrrr @runningawaywithloki @lady-rose-moon @icytrickster17

(New art too!)

Sea Ranch, CA Sometime after the era fondly referred to as "Peak Tom"

The path back to his weekend rental was winding, to say the least.

Coastal sage and nubby coyote bush snagged the transparent black nylons you put on at the last minute when your winter skin looked a little too ashy for an evening event at Sea Ranch amongst the Bay Area’s artsy crowd. Your hand glided down to touch the plants along the escarpment, pulling a sprig off one of the branches with a gentle tug. Holding it to your nose and inhaling the scent, mixed with the salt misting up from the ocean below, it feels like velvet air coursing through your lungs.

You are climbing now, and you imagine by the time you get to the top of the cliff, your breath will be dangerously close to being lost. You were correct.

The view that opens before you, even in the moonless night, is more incredible than anything you could remember seeing of late. He’s way off in front of you, nervously plodding-perhaps to get inside the thick redwood doors and clean up quickly before welcoming you in. You can barely see the outline of his suit, his shoulder blades, noble triangles against the lithe of his tall frame.

He’s left a light on inside, as he nervously opens the door the light hits his face. It’s a relief to see him after what felt like 30 minutes trekking through the California coastline in borrowed Prada flats. From your side of the window, he’s impossibly handsome, untouchable. The window feels like a metaphor.

How you managed to get an interview with him at this hour, after an overly festive San Francisco film festival party, was a mystery, but he agreed when you took the chance. You’d been eyeing him all night, the last person you expected to be there, and the most interesting.

Only hours before, you’d quietly moved to the deck of the main Sea Ranch house, holding your cell phone to the pristine glittery night sky, searching for a signal to rejuvenate your bad cell service. You Googled “Tom Hiddleston” just to be sure it wasn’t Michael Fassbender.

Then when you heard someone say his name, you were clear, it was him.

It was unlike you to invite yourself into the conversation he was already having with a keen-eyed group of Brits across the room, stationed next to a looming Peter Doig painting and a roaring fire, but you did. Making a joke, dropping your cocktail napkin in your nervousness. When he picked it up mid-sentence and handed it back to you, eyes meeting yours, you knew. You waited a few moments but then told him who you were, the beat you were covering for the impossibly small publication you just started writing for. You were way in over your head.

Maybe you should have covered the state fair first, not the San Francisco film festival post-screening events. The roar of crashing waves just outside the sheer wall of glass was unnerving. You flagged down one of the servers and had another caramel-colored Manhattan with one of those big ice cubes that obscure the actual amount of alcohol. Tom did the same, eyes never leaving you.

He made a joke about the event planners saving money with the big ice cubes, “a deliberate act of malice” he said. By midnight you’d managed to find a cozy red, mostly ornamental couch, with cushions seemingly filled with lead, one shift too many caused Tom to say it first. To ask where you were staying.

You weren’t. That was the thing.

You were going to drive back to ennui filled Napa in the wee morning hours, with the marine layer locked in place, a challenge even for the sober. Which you clearly were not.

*Tom would later correct your pronunciation of ‘ennui’ when you used it in conversation, this may or may not have created a small pause in kinetic flow between you.

He offered for you to have some tea (or coffee because you were American, he promised he drank entirely too much coffee and was an honorary American because of it). He offered to be interviewed in his weekend cliff-facing Bill Turnbull masterpiece.

He was effulgent in his offering. So much so that you worried about how he seemed determined to make a good impression on you, a stranger with no obvious pedigree to situate yourself in a status of his interest.

You made your way inside, and you were right-he is nervously cleaning up. He’d been there for less than 24 hours and somehow managed to leave his running clothes, cliff bar wrappers, and socks all over the front room. He mentions jet lag, and delayed flights on the usually reliable British Airways.

You spy at least 25 pretzel packages on the quartz counter, and you ask Tom if those were from his flight. He gives a “ehehehehehheehe” laugh and says the flight staff was worried because he didn’t like the in-flight meal.

Of course, you asked what it was, how could you not.

It turns out it was beef bourgeon with Yukon potatoes. Tom explains the ‘why’ behind his reluctance to eat the meal, but you are simply not listening anymore. You are caught up in your own anxiety. He smells like blood orange and lilac with cedar. He smells like fancy architecture. He explains the house he is staying in with precise detail, he’s giving a dissertation on the Sea Ranch movement of the 70s but you hear approximately every other word. You are caught up in little visual details between the words you hear.

The way he seems different than the man you had watched on the San Diego Comic-Con reels, the impossibly linguistically delightful rhetorician of arcane theses. His mind accosts you, but his energy seems stuck in his head. It’s unnerving.

You wonder if he is even aware of his body, your body-or how you both are sitting now on the hastily cleaned up front room couch, bare feet accidently touching in thoughtless intervals. He is still beautiful but different, something has changed. You admittedly hadn’t kept up with his work, you were essentially a Marvel adjacent fan at best, and your previous amateur journalism beat was not entertainment, or the arts beat, it was tech.

There is an old wooden clock on the wall and the hourly bell strikes pausing you both, it’s 2:00 am. You laugh to yourself when you realize it’s now February 14th. Not one for any commercialized sentimentality or strange Catholic holidays masquerading as innocuous celebrations of love, you wonder to yourself if they even celebrate Valentine’s Day in England.

You want to ask Tom, but you are careful right now, he’s overly generous and his ego seems hidden under his red beard.

He’s giving “wounded” but there’s still his gaze, his cerulean eyes are boring holes through you. His skin is too golden when spring is still a few months away, it contrasts against his button-down shirt which is unbuttoned quite far. His pants aren’t two sizes too small like you remember him wearing to press events before, but they are still tight, they hug his thighs like neoprene, they are too distracting, you can’t ask if they have Valentine’s Day in London. You’ve never even been to the UK. Your blank passport is a spectral vision hanging over your head, you are a ghost covered with a bedsheet.

You debate a few more long, ponderous minutes before you finally ask if they celebrate Valentine’s Day in England. Tom wonders why you are asking. You remind him-today is now Valentine's Day. He laughs and explains America is much more theatrical than England-Brits don’t fall for heart-shaped boxes of chocolate.

You say, “So what do you guys fall for then?”

“Intelligence.”

You die a little. That’s it. You’ll never get your interview questions out of your mouth, and you may want this to end romantically. Any warm-blooded human would-when faced with the charm of Tom Hiddleston-even if it’s slightly redacted. Even if it’s like the big monolith ice cubes from the party earlier, somehow obscuring the ingredients.

You also want to know more about why he seems so different. You pry a little, your intuition is good enough and you can tell something happened.

Maybe it was a love affair, maybe he’s got mental health issues, maybe it’s being too famous, too known. This level of celebrity and privilege is impossible for you to sort out logically. You’ll likely never know what it feels like to have the kind of money to do anything and everything you’d ever dreamed of doing, and the charisma to attract endless people to bed.

He’s not vapid, though. At least his persona isn’t. He should be but he just isn’t Hollywood. You feel accepted by him, although you wonder how true that is, how true it could be-he comes from a world of strict judgments attached to insane amounts of money. People get exactly what they want. He’s part of that beast. He knows it, but he seems so normal right now. He even says he hates LA. He will never live there.

As you keep talking, words are mixing. Which are your thoughts, and which are his? A prelude perhaps to how he is in bed, all-consuming, immersive. He pulls you in, and you feel invigorated and ready to be supine all at once. Your body slinks down the cushions until you both are sitting on the plush rug, backs against the bottom of the couch.

Tom stares at you with the intensity of an SLS rocket launcher (the knowledge of an SLS rocket launcher is the byproduct of your last beat before entertainment and after tech-military weaponry). He stares at you like he owns you. Like there’s a collar around your neck. You check for a second just to be sure, running your chrome-colored nails against your throat.

Maybe that’s what he is struggling with, having too much pleasure and too much happiness. He’s laying low, attending minuscule film festival after parties in Northern California. Talking to a woman like you at 2:30 am, you feel much like the high tide outside the endless glass windows, disoriented by the lack of the moon's influence.

You close your eyes for just a second, and you can hear his voice mixing with the waves, the alcohol you’ve consumed, and his generous pours of the local wines he was gifted from the nebulas of vintners at the party. He can’t take them back to London, so “we better drink up,” he laughs again, emptying the second bottle into your vintage glass.

Are you holding it from the stem or the cup? Your grip is too tight, you notice. You try and hold the glass with less pressure, but your hands are like talons. If you weren’t holding on to a wine glass, surely it would be Tom’s cock.

Which you had spied the last time he got up to grab another bottle of wine, his jacket tossed on the chair to reveal his form with even more clarity. Although you tried not to look, it was difficult to miss. You assumed he wasn’t even hard yet, too lost in conversation.

You pondered if this was his thing, hooking up casually. It wouldn’t be surprising, but he was just so nice and sincere in all his actions it was hard to sift out the carnal jock with rugby stories from college and pick-up games in his London neighborhood to the starry-eyed poet delivering such lines as:

"When I consider how my light is spent, Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide, And that one Talent which is death to hide, Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent To serve therewith my Maker, and present My true account, lest He returning chide; “Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”

By the time the last comp wine was consumed and the waves outside drifted back into low tide, you knew it was now or never.

He hadn’t touched you, not even tried; you were just left with the pleasurable burn from his boyfriend experience. You could feel the wheels turning in his mind. Perhaps he was wondering if he should be less caring, should you get too attached to his attention, his cerulean stare. He couldn’t be. Otherwise, it seemed, even if he put his acting skills to work on changing what appeared to be his perpetually endearing substrate.

He grabbed your wine glass from your hand, and you cautiously released it, wondering about your previous thought of what your hand would grab if it wasn’t a wine glass.

He gently placed his head on your shoulder with his eyes closed. Good god he smelled like heaven. Like signed contracts, like large claw foot bathtubs with a view of the Mediterranean Sea. He smelled like ginger and carrots and felt warm and hard simultaneously.

His skin was soft, but his features, like his triangle shoulder blades and his nose, were strong. They felt like swords piercing your skin. You were slayed by his bone structure even before he put his cock inside you.

You hoped it would be comfortably nestled between your legs by the time the sun began to rise over the luxuriant rock wall the house rested upon. Societal norms, class expectations, and personal relationships be damned. The wine and your own ennui fueled your longing for him—

Continue on to-

Part 2

#tom hiddelston loki #tom hiddleston #loki laufeyson #tom hiddleston fanfic #loki mcu #MCU #I'm insane

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