fabulous!

A little different then what I normally post about but I love the bright color and general fabulous nature of the work by James Gobel.


His works are collaged, felted, yarned, and bedazzled paintings that celebrate the "bears" of western gay culture.


Music informing his work greatly in the setting for his subjects but also often being the titles of individual works and frequently seen actually in the works themselves, perhaps on a t-shirt the subject wears?


in a write up at his galleries website, by Ken Pratt, this is stated:

...there is something more than celebration going on here. In the construction of the images and the depiction of the characters that fill them, we are somehow invited to take stock. In much the same way that Aubrey Beardsley is both complicit with and critical of the decadent creatures he created, there is something in Gobel's work that asks us to question the incessant drive for fabulousness, gorgeousness and fame (if only on the dance floor) that form the fallout out of the radical gay movements of the 1970's.

See more of his work here.