A fine art and cooking blog by Darren Daz Cox. I am the greatest artist in the world, next to my soulmate Holly (Chef Chauvinist Piglette). We are resident artist's at the Speakeasy Art Center in Pekin Illinois.
You might know me from
Keansburg, NJ - Dearborn, MI Peoria, IL - Carbondale, IL Ft. Lauderdale, FL - Columbus, MS Repulse Bay, HK - Exeter, UK
"I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people." Vincent Van Gogh
"Love is the answer" John Lennon
This site is also the digital home of Youdle the bear and GoBzine my free snail mail art zine company!
I am the blueberry that you saw
in that big old spiderweb
I dangle in random absurdity
like some strange poem you might have read...
My Best Poem
how precious are dreams
that logical themes
quote facts in attempt to deny you
that magical day, when you can say
I believed!
and that's why they ARE true!
Thesis Statement I like art, I do art,
I do art all the time,
I do alot of art
and when I'm not
sometimes I write a rhyme!
LOVE IT SO MUCH! Sand 'tween my toes
and minimal clothes
make for fun in the sun
yeah you know it!
but the seashore at night
is a sensual sight
as the moonbeams
sow love seeds for poets!
Time Time is a weird thing
goes sooo slow when yer
waiting for the bell to ring
goes fast on Christmas
and sunny days
and when you're in love
it compresses and strays,
time is elastic
and sometimes like glue
but it's never wasted
when I talk to you!
Artists
all great artists seem full of doubt
there is too much inside
and not enough out
but each piece of art
makes someones day,
perhaps our souls
need it that way.
kharmalade
Would this have made
a good last day?
did I accomplish
any kharmalade goal?
did I climb some sunsetted peak
by the bay
to placate my expectant soul?
no, but i did take a second
to look around
like that dude
with his own Iron Chefs,
and in that infinity portal
i'll go as a mortal
suspecting it's all for the best....
SOMETHING GOOD
I remember something good
back when days
unfolded like
a grand adventure should.
I don't want to just fit in
be functional like some machine,
I want a purpose
need the wind
to blow the scent of fortune
on my skin.
Are you of that small percent
who cannot fold
who will not bend
who takes a soul and strips it bare
not because you can
but because it's there... ?
You Is You
You are you and that is good
you may not be what they say you should
or be that which you cannot be
and you wouldn't want to be like me
but I see you as you and so
if you see me unmasked say "yo"
"what makes Me me is all unique
what makes us Us makes us complete"
I Artist i sometimes wonder
if it is so
that I am an artist
simply because i say so was I born with talent
to write or to paint?
a prodigy perhaps? there's no doubt that I aint not a leader or lackey no big money schemes but an artist resulting from having big dreams they say visualise what you want to be regardless of what people say and all will come true quite possibly maybe some happy day!!
THE DANDYLION STAR Amongst the speckled field of black
I saw the dandylion star
it winked at me and I winked back
and sent that wish up far,
the other stars looked more like gems
like diamonds stuck in tar,
but I liked the mellow
glow of the yellow
wonderful dandylion star.
like crystal fish the others sit
cold like a platinum bar,
but how can you miss when you make a wish upon the dandylion star?
WE TWO STARS We two stars
burn so intense
without pretence or fuss
and what would we say
if somewhere far away
someone made a wish upon us?
for the darker the night
the brighter the light
that shines for every face
so get up and stay
in the vast milky way
and add your light to the space!
Time travel and time loops are a popular theme in our Western culture. Most often we see the idea of a segment of time repeating as packaged entertainment but sometimes, as you’ve likely experienced, there is that strange feeling of deja-vu!
I don’t watch a lot of TV but I also don’t want to be an anti-tv nazi as life should be fun not some grim struggle, so I indulge now and then and thanks to Netflix and Hulu and I-Tunes etc you can basically spend your next Groundhog Day watching time loop shows!
Here are my favorite time loop episodes (in no particular order).
Of course you have to mention Bill Murray in Groundhog Day as the ultimate time loop show, and last year (or was it the year before that?) I wrote a blog post talking about a day that I could repeat over and over, however, since I met Holly I really have to change my mind on that. I’d rather take a mundane ordinary average day with her than any of my glory days!
Today, coincidentally, might actually be a day I could live over and over, check out the video we spontaneously made today!
Video of Holly with The Cupcake Angel oil painting by Darren Daz Cox.
The painting, as you can see below, is thick oil paint with tiny glass beads and pearls stuck in it!
Here is Holly with my awesome Caramel Angel painting!
I have some more awesome recipes to post from Holly aka Chef Chauvinist Piglette but first some found art! (I found it on the internet and assume it is has no copywriter).
A Woman’s place is in the kitchen! Love, Chef Chauvinist Piglette
I am a pretty cool guy, I make art, I write poetry and have always been a dreamer.
One day I met my soulmate Holly and the adventure began.
She made me a soda cap button like the couple in UP.
I made this Adventure book for our souvenirs!
Holly is my favorite art model and inspires my figure drawing with her natural poses, I mean she is wearing a posh frock, pearls, painted but bare toes and is peeling potatoes for her gormet soup right now. We call it Vincent Van Gogh soup because we are poor like his Potato eaters painting! Being poor and creative is far better than being rich and un-creative! She made me a Dead Milkmen ‘taking retards to the zoo’ (it’s a song off their debut album) unofficial bootleg t-shirt for Christmas which is so excellent and punk rock! The pic below was drawn long before I met Holly and kind of symbolizes the past for me. The bored angel with her neglected guinea pig haha! guess that isn’t too hard to find some psychological meaning in there if you like to do such things. Above is one of my latest sketches taken from real life. Holly likes to jump up and down on the bed, because she can and that carefree frolicking inspires my art more than more ‘serious’ topics. I am a Roccoco fan (it’s the art of the court of Marie Antoinette!) far more than what came after that era of art! I have always wondered if the figures in famous paintings of the past were inspired by lovers (rather than it being an intellectual exercise in line and shadow for example). I’m sure if Vincent Van Gogh had found his soulmate he would have painted lots of pics of her! Here is a pic of Holly working on a painting! Holly has been making some great stuff with Femo clay! I love the fact that her art compliments mine. It feels good and makes people happy.
I just had the best Christmas of my life (since I was a kid anyway!).
DJ Disaster suggested that I should buy a ‘Our first xmas’ ornament and I said “you don’t know Holly if you think she would buy something like that or think it was cute that I bought one of those hideous mass produced pieces of generic crap!”.
It’s cool being punk rock artists, Holly and I have the same thought processes and attitudes to materialism and general weakness in society. There’s more to xmas than buying crap! As I suspected, she made a flying guinea pig ornament with a Gustave Klimt inspired present in his little paws haha! So excellent! We will meet him again next xmas!
I have so much more art to put on this blog but for now, this photograph I took of Holly and her bird paintings in progress really makes me happy, I hope it inspires you to be creative too!
“I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.” Vincent Van Gogh
Well the zine project is off to a great start! Over 50 people have received their copy of Faerie Zine #1 (in various incarnations as I worked on it!) and some people really liked it! I’m sure everyone appreciated it that received it but it obviously isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but the art project was to do it! Spread the love! Below is art from the next copy out in a month or so! GoBzine Publishing rules!
You can get your own free underground art zine by writing to Darren Daz Cox box 1111 Pekin Illinois 61554 USA Planet Earth. (I know, how excellent to have box number eleven eleven right? The universe loves me and wants YOU to get cool art for free in your analog mail box!!)
Eventually, as Riverfront Media gets settled I will have color copies of zines aand poster sized prints available for whomever asks!
There was no thought, no conscious intention even, just peace and harmonious feeling channelled through to the hand from the soul…
The one below was from the same pages of the wonderful sketchbook I bought on sale at Hobby Lobby in Pekin (yea! I love that place!!!). It is using a variety of art materials and is a prototype for larger paintings!
Soon after that yellow bird appeared on the drawing above, I saw a bright yellow bird in the parking lot at my day job and he inspired me (along with his greener colored mate!).
Art by Darren Daz Cox
and if you realllly want to hear it, here’s a link to a song I made with my band Homer Simplex (in the Riverfront Media studios at the Speakeasy Art Center 353 Court st. pekin Illinois) to inspire Dave Omega Moses to write some new material since he is a really awesome singer/songwriter! Dave Omega Get Off The Couch
and if you need to read the lyrics for that 30 seconds of musical genius*…
this song goes out to Dave Omega you need to get off the couch
pick up your banjo make your fans go wow wow wow
put down the star wars dolls stop drooling on boba fett
you’ve watched so many Netflix movies you’re turning in Shrek
you used to write some real good songs but now you a lump
so get off the couch dont be a silly chump – Dave!
I am working on getting royalty free audio material for our 24/7 streaming radio station (for arts related projects and community service that Riverfront Media is initiating with me as the program director!). I will have a bunch of short stories and poems as well as original olde time radio Theee- a-Tor!
Oh and I almost forgot, here is my latest inspirational poem!
This world is a mirror of how you feel
it reflects back symbols of you
so BE the change that you want to see
and find out that this is true.
If sad why stew and make the world blue
and hating just makes your fate worse
and you CAN get the whole world to smile with you
but you will have to smile first!
*the amount of genius in this song is mostly due to Apple and Garage Band on my Macbook!
I added a 20 ft tall girl on this 10ft high mural so the rodent of unusual size will have its own human! You can see this mural on the 3rd floor of the Speakeasy Art Center in Pekin Illinois!
I am going to publish these blog posts from my I-phone so this one is kind of a test!
I got my art mural mojo back after a couple of months hiberating this past winter and here is the first days work on on the new mural 10ft high by about 15ft long!
That’s me, Darren Daz Cox in front of the new mural in progress! and below is a detail of the transition between the two murals. You can see a rodent of unusual size motif with the beginnings of a dandelion field! There is also a hole in the wall on the angel’s leg there. It is the honesty of the medium rather than a design choice.
This pic below shows a life sized spontanious painting I did sunday night, January 30th 2011, on the walls leading up to the third floor at The Speakeasy Art Center 353 Court Street where I have the coolest art studio in Pekin Illinois I mean The World.
It took me about 2 hours and way too many listens to the same James Brown funk mp3 that is now burned in my brain.
An angel leads the viewer up the stairs, her pet bat sits on her back it’s wings gently wave. I’ve been working on a huge 8ft by eight foot canvas oil painting it currently looks like this! That’s a giant guinea pig, the largest ever painted on canvas in the history of art history!
I drew a whole bunch of guinea pigs recently in preparation for the big painting and the big painting is preparation for the next 20 feet of my psychedelic wall mural. And that’s to proove to myself that I could painting something monumentally huge. I always liked guinea pigs and flying guinea pigs rule! So I painted on my living room wall as practice for the big 8ft x 8ft canvas.above is on the canvas, below on the living room wall! It started in black and white then I painted color over it.Below is the bottom figure on the canvas.and more from the wall at home. and one more thing, the Bored Angel sketch that will now be on the big canvas!…update tuesday morning before the killer death storm blizzard from hell that will indubidedly destroy civilization as we know it, I decided, or rather I got a very strong idea for my next 20ft long mural scene, angels with an army of unicorns vs. faeries with their army of guinea pigs, featuring a scene from back in the golden days when they were battling for the supremacy of rulers of Earth!
Yea for me, I woke up, saw this painting on my bedroom wall and was suddenly inspired to finish it! I think there’s still room for some gold highlights, heck, none of my art is ever really finished! But I have made a commitment to sell something in the next Art Alliance show, just to finally pop that cherry of artistic purity, I don’t need it anymore and being a starving artist shouldn’t be a career!
~*Springtime Maiden – oil on canvas 20×24 – Darren Daz Cox 2008*~ This painting started as a charcoal sketch directly on the canvas then the first layer of oil paints then a layer of varnish (you can see where the light is reflecting back on this photo!). At This stage I called it "Allegory of Birth" and the background is an abstract of the biological process, later I added another layer to get a sweet blue oil patina that emphasized the bubbles! Remember that you can put as many layers of oil glazes as you want! I chopped that old digital file up in Photoshop to make a nifty abstract below, why? because I can, why be satisfied with one view of your art? Springtime Maiden such beauty rarely ever shine in thistledown as soft as thine in petals velvet to the cheek in woodland creatures fragile meek springtime leaf and redbird hop the twitch of squirrels tail the colors from the backdrop POP and next to thee they pale springtime maiden in your court rejoice in natures powers treasures so beautiful cant be bought j’aime tu mon ami dans chez flowers ~*really really, did I say cheesy yet? poem by Darren Daz Cox From "Florescent Rat Fur" Limited edition monoprint Poetry Book 1990*~
Yea, it’s an honor to share my art with you again after a brief period of uncertainty! Here’s a sketch I intend to make into a ‘lowbrow’ oil painting! Pencil sketch soon to be an oil painting!
Models include Buddy the bird and Youdle the bear and my guardian angel.
99daz.com the greatest artist blog in the world! I drew this angel washing her dog today.
It’s a happy image! I usually draw angels as nudes, representing truth (as they have nothing to hide), I didn’t invent that concept. it was widely used in the Renaissance.
I suppose this angel has something to hide then hmmm…
TinEye.com, It’s not perfect yet (my art isn’t indexed yet *wah*) but it sure is satisfying to find a larger sized image of a great piece of art you stumble across!
…and here’s some of my art (on this blog it’s generally 500 pixels wide but I have larger versions out there too and would like Tin Eye to index my stuff so people can quickly find a larger size so they print it out or make it a quality desktop pic!).
"She had no use for my heart" Fine art by Darren Daz Cox, pencil and then the liquify filter in Photoshop.
Salvador Dali as an angel – pencil sketch by Darren Daz Cox
It’s funny how I really can’t draw things that aren’t organic, curvy and cute, at least when I just let my mind wander the results are generally pleasant even they are surreal. I don’t have a lot of nightmares and I remember my dreams just about every night so perhaps this why but I think it’s because I consciously chose a target audience for my art and that audience is not how I was when I was an angry young man. Before I was an angry young man I was a pretty damn happy pre-teen who really wanted to learn how to draw, and who wrote poems and stories and read a whole lot of science fiction.
Here’s another sketch I did randomly, the found bird. It would be really special if a bird you had let out of a cage found it’s way back to you! Pencil on paper and colored in Photoshop.
The Found Bird, just some cute art to make the world a better place by positive intention.
this groovy monster appeared randomly when I mirrored the art! yea for monsters!
Oh and the coolest thing ever, well, not ever, but pretty awesomely cool, my friend Jenni from when I lived in Hong Kong scanned a copy of our 1981 yearbook and it had a poem I wrote in there that makes me happy!
My Best Friend by Darren Daz Cox age 12
My best friend is kind of weird
he has no hair, eyebrows or beard
He even has light blue skin
(No don’t tell my next of kin!)
What I tell you is no lie
My best friend will never die,
He’s a mutant from the stars
who has a zombie ranch on Mars
(he keeps them in check they say
by feeding them plutonium hay.)
We met at a lunar convention
while I displayed my new invention.
To study humans was his intention
to study him there’s no need to mention.
I told him of the Earth so green
He told me of the places he’d been.
We talked and talked until we were through
Then I went home and he did too.
I’m really proud of this poem because it’s very me and very Spike Milligany who wrote my favorite poem …
Porridge
Why is there no monument
To Porridge in our land?
It it’s good enough to eat,
It’s good enough to stand!
On a plinth in London
A statue we should see
Of Porridge made in Scotland
Signed, “Oatmeal, O.B.E.”
(By a young dog of three)
Spike Milligan
Jenni was a mutant slave and I was the ruler of the mutants in our school play at St. Georges School called The Second Coming, which was an awesome sci-fi spectacle and the finest thing put on stage since, no, it was the best play ever.
My sister Sonja was also in the play as well as my friends Jamie Anderson (big Judas Priest fan!) and Alex Speed (first guy to suggest Led Zeppelin as a cool band to me hehe!).
I have some really awesome memories, am very happy right now and look forward to an awesome rest of my life!
Michelangelo’s Last Judgement fresco in the Sistine Chapel
I have proven to myself that I can paint big with my 20ft by 10ft oil paint mural in the Speakeasy Art Center and gallery in Pekin Illinois. Now I wish to go bigger and really expand the ideas I started. Here is a detail of my current work that you can see on the third floor of the Speakeasy Art Center, across from the courthouse in Pekin Illinois (there are many other cool artist’s there too with lots to see but please don’t disturb their work!).
Pekin Illinois trippy mural at the Speakeasy Art Center July 12 2010 by Darren Daz Cox
I’ve been working on some smaller paintings with the idea to have something I can sell but you can’t get the detail in a small work that you can with something huge. It is nice to share art and allow people to own something that I put time and effort into. Below are some of my current small works that will be available to whomever wishes to own them for a modest contribution. I figure I’ll sell my small paintings for $99.00 US which is a sum most anyone with a job can afford and will appreciate in value as my work gets more and more noticed.
Angel of Ambiguity oil painting by Darren Daz Cox
Angel of Ascention oil painting by Darren Daz Cox
Fern Faerie oil painting by Darren Daz Cox
These oil paintings are obviously unfinished but I work on as much as I can without forcing the work. If it becomes a chore or a "job" then it doesn’t turn out well so I take my time and slowly build up a picture while I think good thoughts! It is important to me that the quantum intent associated with my art is of a positive nature and while that has no apparent relevance in a world where scientists cannot measure such things it is very important to me,,,
Pop quiz. name the parts in the eye that translate light into colors and shades of black and white.
Answer: the rods and cones, you knew that, the good old rods and cones, specialized cells that have photo receptors.
Now, answer this. Why does your pineal gland (named for it’s pine cone shape) have similar rods and cones? There’s no light getting in to the middle of your brain! Did God make a mistake? Did satan put them there to confuse us like he did with dinosaur bones? Did we once have a big hole in our heads that evolution closed up?
Maybe all the ancient religions were right. The pineal gland, symbolized by the pine cone since the time of the Egyptian Pharaohs (at least), is our third eye, the eye that connects us to the infinite…
The concept of the third eye is something we experience everyday, our Hindu friends often wear the tilaka (that dot on the forehead) and popular culture is full of references to it.
So why is it so taboo a subject? Why is our innate spirituality so woo-woo?
If you don’t like my post you can press fast forward… (interpolating 99 Problems by Jay-Z)
So why is my blog 99daz.com and not 88daz or 45daz or any other combination of two digits?
First of all 99 is a penultimate number, it’s one away from 100 which in terms of percent is perfect or at least complete.
I’m not trying to be humble by saying I’m not perfect, far from it, 99 is a metaphor for being one step away from God, as all of us mortal souls are.
"You asked me for one hundred dollars but I didn’t have but 99" Sonny Boy Williamson
99 happens to appear more often on my I-tunes playlist than any other combination of two digit numbers, some of my all time favorite songs are "99" songs and many of my favorite bands have excellent songs with 99 in the title too!
No, the Toto song isn’t in my playlist, I don’t hate it or anything negative, it just doesn’t make the cut, considering how many songs I’ve heard and the availability of music these days I don’t have to listen to anything but the best!
So here are my favorite songs with 99 in the title. Perhaps you can suggest some I might have missed?
99 Luft Ballons and the English version (99 Red Balloons) by Nena totally rock and the 80′s punk cover by 7-Seconds and, this took me by surprise, the best (in my opinion) version of the song appeared in the 90′s by Goldfinger.
99 Problems by Jay-Z is one of few new school rap tunes I really really love.
One of my favorite bands Social Distortion did 99 To Life which is a brilliant tune that is an homage to the darker side of those home grown American blue grass tunes. "lonely weekends lonely nights the judge he gave me 99 to life"
Sony Boy Williamson uses 99 as a metaphor for the blues in his classic song 99. After all, what is the blues if it’s not a dollar short?
Two more of my favorite punk bands have songs with the title 99 (weirdly enough), The Minutemen and Screeching Weasel, both songs are excellent.
The last song on my 99 list is a cover sung by a local Central Illinios favorite country rock performer Simon Webb. 99.9% Sure, I don’t know who does the original, maybe I should check it out but I really enjoy Simon Webb’s cover!
It’s good to be on a creative streak again and I am proud that I have finally transitioned from the relative safety of pencil sketches and liquify filter random happy accidents to oil paint on canvas which is what I said I would do about five years ago on a my DeviantArt site haha!
I am so totally a Taurus in that I am stubborn and I feel my art power as a juggernaut and when I get in the zone some cool things that result, things that make it all worth while for me, even though I’ve sold less paintings than Vincent Van Gogh did in his lifetime haha!
Here’s a painting I did the other day, totally at random except for the choice of a pot of white paint, a lid for the pot that turned out to have been for the yellow paint as it had yellow paint on the lid, and two small brushes, one of which, I found by happy accident, wasn’t properly cleaned from the blue paint it still had a bit of on it. The dark lines are from a grease pencil (works perfectly with oil paint!).
The random became serendipity and I totally love this painting! I know, somewhere in the universe, perhaps on a planet similar to this one or perhaps just down the block from me, someone will love this painting too and it makes me deeply happy to know that someone will look at this painting and be happy, if only for a moment.
The Girl and the Bear oil paint on canvas board 8×10 inches (unfinished) by Darren Daz Cox.
Another painting that is still unfinished but getting there is this one…
Moon Falling, oil on canvas about 5 ft x 3.5 ft (unfinished) by Darren Daz Cox
And even bigger than that one…
Spirit Journey, oil on canvas (in two pieces) about 8ft tall. Unfinished so far. By Darren Daz Cox
Here is the pencil sketch for the original idea I had for the painting that I’ll probably re-visit many times as it hits my brain’s art g-spot to think about clouds that look like animals and why people do that, somehow it is part of the big answer to the meaning of life (or just cool).
Cloud Girl pencil sketch, (on my desk at work to inspire me) by Darren Daz Cox
I’ve still been sketching with pencil but these days the majority of those have gone directly to people in my immediate circle because it gives them something they can share with others to build a bond, whether they are laughing at it with their friends or admiring it, the result is the same, it is an object that they can focus on while building human bonds, it’s a win/win thing!
Here’s a sketch that didn’t go to anyone in particular because it’s a little too creepy to give this to someone and it’s basically unfinished but it’s here for historical accuracy to show another facet of my ouvre. I feel obligated to draw some faeries to balance out the angels I’ve been drawing as I don’t want either group to think I’m taking sides! (you might want to read my blog post of faeries vs. angels to understand what I’m talking about here http://99daz.com/faeries-vs-angelshaha!)
Random Faerie Representin’ , pencil sketch by Darren Daz Cox
This painting started as a charcoal sketch directly on the canvas then the first layer of oil paints then a layer of varnish (you can see where the light is reflecting back on this photo!). At This stage I called it "Allegory of Birth" and the background is an abstract of the biological process, later I added another layer to get a sweet blue oil patina that emphasized the bubbles! Remember that you can put as many layers of oil glazes as you want! I chopped that old digital file up in Photoshop to make a nifty abstract below, why? because I can, why be satisfied with one view of your art? 
Springtime Maiden such beauty rarely ever shine in thistledown as soft as thine in petals velvet to the cheek in woodland creatures fragile meek springtime leaf and redbird hop the twitch of squirrels tail the colors from the backdrop POP and next to thee they pale springtime maiden in your court rejoice in natures powers treasures so beautiful cant be bought j’aime tu mon ami dans chez flowers 
Jenni was a mutant slave and I was the ruler of the mutants in our school play at St. Georges School called The Second Coming, which was an awesome sci-fi spectacle and the finest thing put on stage since, no, it was the best play ever.
