Poetry in the Streets

Dale vN Marshall: Stitching Wounds, Leaving Marks Museum solo exhibition catalog essay published February 2014 for the Herbert Museum, Coventry, England UK by Cherri Lakey      ANNO DOMINI Gallery, San Jose, California, US Dale Vermin Marshall is one of the most intriguing artists to come along in our times. A precocious “seeker” from an early age, Marshall has traveled down tumultuous roads that led to serious consequences as a result of his curiosity, ego and determination to make his mark. Marshall is blunt about his formative years and the succession of bad decisions and their resulting consequences. When he speaks of his experiences they are told with a tone of any historical document, with interjections of his own opinion as to whether it was right or wrong of him to respond the way he did given his circumstances at the time. He's aware, in hindsight, how one event led to another, and perhaps the results shouldn't be so surprising considering the people and environment with which he chose to surround himself. There is an air of detachment in his stories, suggesting to the listener that he keeps retelling it in order to keep alive those things that have led him to become the man / the artist that he is today. Experiences happen to everyone, whether your belief is that these things occur by chance or divine intervention is of no importance….it is what we do with these experiences that make us who we are. That is what separates the mundane from the remarkable—and Marshall is remarkable. He has seized all that he has done (and all that has been done to him)  and owns it, as if it is the only possession he truly values. In recounting his story, in creating his art, he is telling a tale of rebellion, rehabilitation and redemption. It is in Dante's Purgatory that I often imagine Marshall perfectly at home. At ease in this middle plane that is bound by heaven above and hell below. It is a safe place for now…it gives him the opportunity to mark his time: to rectify wrongs, contemplate consequences, make amends with the subjected….if he chooses to do so. Marshall seems to not only to take these actions, but he also does so with the urgency of someone running out of time. Marshall has lingered both in the above and the below….but has no certainty yet of which way he'll be called. In the meantime, he will do his damnedest to influence this outcome for himself. Starting each new canvas, Marshall tags it with VERMIN, his moniker from his graffiti days. This is one of my favorite things about his work. Knowing it is there, I search for this tag in all of his work. Some are more noticeable than others: a "V" or an "N" stands out to me, undetected by most…what with all the strokes and texture it's difficult to know if it’s a letter or an accidental flick of the wrist. But once you know, it's evident that this is no mistake. His paintings assure you there is an intelligence within the work, an intention that goes beyond just letting paint fly through air to land where it may by happenstance. Each mark or stroke of color is assigned with a duty to serve its purpose. As with much of art history's enduring art, it is the mystical and esoteric that keeps our fascination over generations. The slightest gesture or odd placement of selected objects in the composition piques our curiosity to want to know why it is there, the way it is there. Marshall's tagging of his work, I believe, serves as a jumping off point into the well from which he draws his inspiration. It conjures up remembrances, emotions and the reliving of his tale. There is no duality within Marshall between his work and his own experiences. This is significant to the viewing of the work—we are literally seeing his experiences as he lived through them. Marshall's painting: Street culture brings a gritty consequence, is a warning. The lettering is covered in muted tones of beige, grey and black, glyph-like markings in white, the red thread a taut diagonal from top right corner to bottom left, all these features attest that it's a warning, but not one anyone can easily read. And perhaps that's the point, it's not Marshall trying to impose his personal experiences to affect your future actions, it's just an observation drawn from the life he's lived, and the remaining artifacts of his own self-excavation. The recurring theme of wounds and scars permeates Marshall's work. His works on paper are skin-thin, easily torn, and the paper is literally stitched together with red thread, often the needle in position for another stitch but abandoned. His canvases are calculated compositions of shape and color marred by scrapes and cuts, gashes and slices, suggesting the artist’s travel on life’s rocky path. Even his landscapes seem as if the horizon line has been torn open. An epic battle appears in the distance….the brush strokes are smoke and fire, we sense the clash of opposing forces crashing into one another. The visual cues are so forceful that you can hear the sound of it within your own head. There are many artists that find their fascination and prime subject matter in observing the human condition through others. They watch our mannerisms, the way we carry ourselves in our environment, the sadness on our faces, or the joy in the way we greet each other. They take these observations and filter them through their own mental process, editing our realness down to color, composition, perspective and texture on canvas…often brilliantly, but nonetheless, separated from the subject. It is in this way they play the Maker, depicting us as they wish. Marshall is not one of these artists. He does not stalk us for his content, rather, he is an obsessive observer of the self. He himself is the subject at hand, torn open for us to peer into from a comfortable distance. We don't want to see the wound as it's created, but we're fascinated by the ripened scar fused upon the psyche of the artist; wounds and scars that are slow to heal and easily reopened with each recollection. He has within himself found all the material needed to create a lifetime of work. It is said that if you want to understand the universe, you need only to look within. This is what we experience when viewing Marshall's work: ourselves. His paintings do not rely on the viewer to bring all our mental exercise and emotional baggage to trigger a response. It comes at us with its own intelligence of lived experience, and informs us that one universal law stands true: harmony can be found in chaos. If you pay attention and look deeply enough beneath the surface of what you think you're seeing, it will reveal itself to you. Marshall's personal pendulum sways between angst and peace, heaven and hell, balance and chaos with such a subtle sway between the two that the viewer may not realize which side they're on. Perhaps that is the genius in Marshall's work, he has it figured out that they are not opposite sides, but all is within, all at once, all the time. "The wound is the place where the Light enters you."  ~Rumi