Brian
Fogarty is a novelist, poet, and painter. Much of his work is predicated
on the assumption that whatever it is that drives him to create it's not
far removed from the vital life force that drives other outlaws to drink,
drugs, murder, madness, suicide, or a life of crime. In fact he occasionally
refers to some of his canvases - e.g. the triptych "The Crucifixion
of Nicole" - as "crime scenes", and the glass he uses to
"tape them off" seems to be there to protect the viewer from the
victim's body fluids as much as to unify and preserve the painting.
A number of performances and readings from his poems and novels (notably
"The Feeders", extracts of which were published in two issues
of Running Water) have "enhanced" his reputation as a proponent
of the grotesque, the sinister, the bizarre, the brutal, the ugly, and yet
a number of witnesses (i.e. listeners and readers) have testified to the
exquisite loveliness and fragility of much of his imagery, even though they
admit his work does unflinchingly address the brutal facts of life. |
