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Artist Statement

Gafrique Om dat de werelt is soe ongetru
Daer om gha ic in den ru1

Because the world is so beguiled
Therefore I go into the wild.

Because the world is so untrue,
Therefore I go in rue.

Because the world is so defiled,
Therefore I go into the wild.

I work from archival and contemporary film sources to create electronic paintings of significant social and political events—the tragedies, histories and sometimes comedies of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The work employs the compositional techniques of history paintings or "story painting" using manipulated details2 of people, architecture and landscapes, meticulously selected from film and video stills, photographs, crime scene documents, maps and street views to create the final tableaux, striving for historical accuracy while taking poetic license with time and perspective.

These mise-en-scènes are composed from the fragmented moments of events2 captured on film and are aided by historical accounts, literature, forensic documentation, and contemporary street views. The visual narratives are historically accurate while taking poetic license with time and perspective.

I sample as many contemporaneous sources as relevant to the composition and strive for historical accuracy, taking poetic license in the drama of the moments chosen to depict these stories.

The work is indebted to the intrepid documentarians who recorded these events for posterity.

N.B. Measurements indicate maximum print dimensions but are variable.

Gordon Belray is an artist who creates electronic paintings based on archival and contemporary film sources, depicting significant social and political events of the 20th and 21st centuries. His historically grounded yet poetically interpreted visual narratives are composed from fragmented film moments, literature, forensic records, and street views.

I make narrative paintings of significant figures and events using archival and contemporary sources to reconstruct the tragedies, histories and sometimes comedies of the 20th and 21st centuries.

For me, within the vast visual archive lies a hidden singular composition that I assemble and mould from an almost endless array of fragments2 into a whole of space and time. I cannot say what compels me to a subject; perhaps it is the act of witnessing the ineffable from various angles, tracing back to an innocence lost while watching Lee Harvey Oswald being gunned down on a Sunday morning on live television3. While Goya did not make known his intent for creating the print series The Disasters of War4, the horrific beauty of the plates and their titles, such as no. 44's Yo lo vi, “I saw it”, more than suffice. Equally for me, then, there is little to add beyond "I searched it."

Goya The Disasters of War, Plate 44

The finished work is additionally informed by the oral accounts and histories of those present, forensic documents and maps, the architectural facades and elaborate interiors, the landscapes and streets preserved in old photographs and navigable modern street views, illuminated by the light of the moment. Most critically, it is the gestures of humanity, both heroic and cruel, that I attempt to make seen anew.

While the work is historically accurate down to the minutiae, the nature of its telling needs must take poetic license with time, perspective and composition.

The images of jazz artists continue a practice of drawing musicians in nightclubs that I began as a young man.

The paintings are indebted to those compelled to record what they saw.

1 Flemish inscription from The Misanthrope, Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Rue: sorrow, grief or mourning; from Old English hrēow, cognate with Dutch rouw (“mourning”).

2 Usually several hundred fragments, but as few as three and upwards of a thousand.

3Lee Harvey Oswald, accused of assassinating President John F. Kennedy, was fatally shot by Jack Ruby, a strip club owner, during his transfer from Dallas police headquarters on Sunday, November 24, 1963. The shooting, broadcast live at 11:21 a.m., was witnessed by millions of television viewers.

4 Los desastres de la guerra, The Disasters of War is a series of 82 intaglio prints created between 1810 and 1820 by Francisco Goya, was not published until 1863, 35 years after his death. His handwritten title for the series was Fatales consequencias de la sangrienta guerra en España con Buonaparte, Y otros caprichos enfáticos, (Fatal Consequences of Spain's Bloody War with Bonaparte, and Other Emphatic Caprices).

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