"and when I looked the moon had turned to gold" 

- Blue Moon written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart in 1934.

It’s a great song no matter which version you hear, and there are many many versions from The Marcels doo-wop classic to Biff Brown doing a trombone solo in the pop punk version in 3-Man (early 1990′s Carbondale Illinois band).

I put gold moon motif’s in my art, and people think it must be a sun motif, but the sun is not as poetic as a gold moon as the sun is a powerful constant but a gold moon happens after a blue moon morphs by some magical event!

If you don’t get it that’s ok, this blog is my auto-biography for when I become a famous artist and such things will be in used to fill up an art book and hopefully some kid in college will spontaneously decide to be a great artist too…

 

~* Simplicity by Darren Daz Cox *~

Mega thick acylic paints with elmers glue (standard white glue) squeezed into the wet paint! I like to experiment with art materials and found that the glue in acylic paint really makes some great effects! Texture can be a wonderful thing!

The border on this acrylic painting called "The Family" was done with the crackle glue effect! This jpg however has a digital edge effect on the outside which distorts it somewhat. It was my first in an ongoing series of canvases with a frame or organic border painted as part of the design.

There was a lot of nice art with animals in it at the Art Alliance of Monmouth County in Red Bank NJ last night! The themes were "Fauna" and "Inspired by Seurat", both of which were well chosen for variety and quality I’d say.

There was also a batik demo (given by the amazing Colleen Lineberry) in the studio in the back which inspired me to make some fabric hangings with wax resist art in the future! Hopefully there will be a workshop!

The two acylic paintings below are a diptych called "Innocence and Experience" (in homage to William Blake one of my main inspirations!).

The young horse, to your left, suggests an expanding world, a fresh glistening dewy elastic springtime, the old horse suggests a world that is shriveling up, withering, dry but still full of life, and the composition points upwards to suggest a spiritual connection.

Here I take the ‘frame as part of the motif’ design to the extreme! In both paintings the frame uses more suface area than what it contains!

I started to make horse paintings because of the quote attributed to  Leonardo DaVinci "If  you can draw horses you can draw anything".

~* all art by Darren Daz Cox  *~

and just because I love his positive messaged folky blues-funk, here’s a Biff Brown song (right click to download the mp3)

Judith Slaying Holofernes (1614-20) Oil on canvas 199 x 162 cm Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.

art by Artemisia Gentileschi (July 8, 1593 – 1651/1653)

The world’s greatest musician, Russell Biff Brown has a new daughter! Congrats to him and his family!

Desiderata – Words for Life

1872-1945

Go placidly amid the noise and haste,
and remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible without surrender
be on good terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly;
and listen to others,
even the dull and the ignorant;
they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons,
they are vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others,
you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs;
for the world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals;
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.
Especially, do not feign affection.
Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment
it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,
gracefully surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe,
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be,
and whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.

It’s pretty funny how people have criticized social media guru Chris Brogan for writing a blog peice on KMart, after all his gig is all about building relationships you can use so why not bridge the gap between faceless corporation and people? Anyway, synchronicity and quantum intent has allowed me to have this classic pop punk Kmart song on youtube and on my art blog.

I wanted a simple way to quickly make Youtube videos from my stack of art and stack of MP3′s but I want to use my PC instead of my old Mac. I tried Windows movie maker, and it crashed every time! So I searched and found Pinnacle VideoSpin, a free simple video maker.  You can upload directly to Youtube from the maker so it is pretty quick and clean. Here’s "K-Mart" by 3-Man, a pop punk band fronted by, and songs written by, Russell Biff Brown.

KMart by 3Man (Biff Brown) lyrics

Got three ninety nine in my pocket

going to kmart lookin’ for a bargin

kmart’s got lots of things

balls and hoops and Santo rings

well, I grabbed a cart and

started running down the aisles

in kmart no one goes in single file

I wasted two fatties at the deli stand

ran over two kids in toyland

(chorus)

kmart kmart ran my sister down with a shopping cart

kmart kmart looking for the blue light special

there was a sale i just couldn’t resist

but the light went out and i got pissed

It’s really gross the people pushing and shoving

to go through the place you gotta go num-chukking

it’s blood and guts and bombs and guns

(god, I just hope I didn’t hurt anyone)

(chorus)

(by the way, Alice from the Brady Bunch was the inspiration for the song haha!!)

3-Man rules! For a few months in 1991 they were the coolest band in the world, until Trevis got greedy and tried to sell the demo they recorded doh, Biff broke the band up right after they won the battle of the bands at the infamous Hanger 9 in Carbondale Illinois. Biff Brown of course formed Groove Swamp right after he broke up 3Man!

Here’s all the songs on the infamous demo!

 It’s weird how quickly 3-Man morphed as they started playing Descendents covers (which Biff didn’t particularly enjoy, he heard me play the Descendents enough for me to know that he wasn’t a fan) and then they did all of Biff’s songs (including several from our days in Mississippi), then Biff started to collaborate with Jazz singer Nora, amazingly one of the rare ‘un-plugged’ gigs survived, and here it is…

~* all music by Biff Brown – singer/songwriter now in PA*~

I painted a huge mutant angel on unprimed canvas, similar to the style of the painting above (Biff and his Wife Julie), as a backdrop for 3-man, does anyone have a photograph of it? Trevis? Lumpy?

Gemini Illustration by Darren Daz Cox – former artist for 3Man, who did the pop punk classic song – KMart.

If you find yourself blocked while starting to write something originial, write a short piece on something you know. Pick your "Groundhog Day", the one day you could happily live over and over if you were stuck in a time loop.

Phil (Bill Murray) : I was in the Virgin Islands once. I met a girl. We ate lobster and drank pina coladas. At sunset we made love like sea otters. *That* was a pretty good day. Why couldn’t I get that day over and over and over…

I have always been fascinated with caterpillars, the first thing I ever remember drawing was a green caterpillar, my first poem was about a caterpillar too, it went  something like "catty hatty went to latty". The idea of metamorphasizing into another, more beautiful, creature has always stuck with me, perhaps it is my soul reminding me that we, as mortals, are merely larval too…

Spring 1990, my car had been towed away but I didn’t care, I couldn’t afford the insurrance, the wipers were broken and when the tire blew I knew it was the end. It had been given to me by my ex-fiances dad and I saw it as a poetic end to things, just leave it where it broke down and move on…

Lynn had been my first love, we’d been together for three years or so. To our friends we looked like the local version of Sid and Nancy and just as destined to fail gloriously. I knew that I had been to blame, at least partially, for the breakup and while I had virtually no experience in love prior to meeting her I didn’t think I’d end up feeling so dirty.

My worst fear was that I was an asshole like my dad, just not cut out for family style love and I too would end up running away to some third world country where life is cheap and rules are lax. I mean El Salvador was hardly a tourist destination in the 1980′s but that’s where he went…

 I didn’t dwell on it too much as I was having too much fun. In the microcosm that was MUW and the Possum Town area I was well known by sight and by voice. I might not have been the only guy who had a mohawk, possibly though, but I sure as hell was the only one who had had a fiance with one! I had the only car that was painted with peace and anarchy signs and had the first punk rock radio show on fm there.

The semester after the breakup I moved into the dorms on a campus that was 70-80% women, the school had been a womans college in the old days of segregation but now welcomed men, but because history and tradition meant so much to the board of trustees they still called the college Mississippi University for Women, which, I hate to admit, is one of the reasons I had made plans to leave after my sophmore year and finish my degree at Southern Illinois U in Carbondale.

I had a lot of friends, half a dozen of which I know are still just as cool, beautiful and creative as they were back then and they were the ones who I’d hug often. I had a few friends in town left from my air force days, my skate punk comrades and my stoner buddies. The art students liked me enough to make me their representative for the student government, not bad for a sophomore! and the teachers tolerated my eccentric use of their property, like the night we had that huge tye-dye party in the art building ha!

The art building is where I fell in love for the second time in my life.

My friends and I called her The Groovy Chick. She was a senior and I later found out that she was a non-local-born misfit too, she just didn’t make it as obvious as me.  One night we found ourselves taking a break together outside the art department and it happened, totally unexpectedly, love in all it’s glory. Perhaps the fact that we were both moving on in a matter of months allowed us the luxury of romance without having to think of the future. Her friends appeared to disapprove and my friends were concerned that I’d get hurt which only made it sweeter for the both of us.

One day I picked a bunch of wildflowers for her and she had them on her desk in the graphic design room.

Which brings me to my groundhog day.

I visited The Groovy Chick at her desk one sunny day and noticed that the flowers had just started crawling with baby caterpillars! I called up Biff Brown who was DJing and asked him to get people to name the caterpillars and dedicate songs to them. Biff played along and so did the listeners. I remember that Brian Pounders dedicated "The Great Gig In The Sky" to the caterpillar called "No" who had died, I wonder if Brian remembers that? Was it Ultra Violet who gave the name of "Gloomchild" to one? I’m pretty sure it was Biff himself who named one "Reginald Gurmy Epstein the third" haha!

Biff recorded his show and gave me the tape, and below are a couple of soundbites from that day in 1990.

I don’t remember the rest of the day but it was perfect, I know that much….

Actually, it might have been the day we went off into the woods to pick blackberrys which inspired my great lost poem "Blackberry Pirates"….

Oil on 2 inch deep canvas 18×24 inches.

It looks a little different than the colors here, but the oil glaze is so transparant, yet thick, it is bouncing the light back from the white gesso beneath and refracting it.

I love the idea of light interacting with the medium, light is so magical!

I don’t know what this means, perhaps it is awaiting a radical group to claim it as their own!

Yes, I’m sure there’s a personal meaning, perhaps my male machno-ness manifested (I was watching Henry Rollins and Iggy Pop on TV when I painted the arm) but I really think it’s a symbol with more meaning for someone else.

Raw Power!

I like the idea of someone randomly finding this painting and saying "I just made a group/concept/etc called The Red Arm and this would be great for our newsletter/graphic/etc). Creating synchronicity is a great thing!

Being an artist is dragging your innermost feelings out, giving a piece of yourself, no matter in which art form, in which medium.
Henry Rollins

I believe that one defines oneself by reinvention. To not be like your parents. To not be like your friends. To be yourself. To cut yourself out of stone.
Henry Rollins

What did Christ really do? He hung out with hard-drinking fishermen.
Iggy Pop

 …and speaking of punk rock! here’s a CD cover for my first punk band Lead Babie! art by me of course!

my first punk band *sigh*, we wrote anti-nuclear war songs and songs about Reagan being a scat-muncher as well as a lot of uncensored radio commedy skits…

essentially it was me (Daz aka Darren Defect with the ideas and artwork  and Russell ‘Rusty rooster’ Brown aka Biff on guitar and vocals)

Lead (prounced Led like in Zeppelin) Babie rules!!

Here’s some of our stuff in MP3 or streaming, however you wankers prefer.

Lead Babie was a punk rock band with a concept, in the future all the radiation from the inevitable nuclear wars would mutate everyone, except the Lead babie who, obviously, was perfect because he hated Ronald Reagan or something like that, it was a long time ago…

Lead Babie’s Motto–; "Please don’t puke on the band members" (which was basically inspired by the Black Flag radio commercials on the ‘Everything went Black" album and Monty Python’s movie The Meaning of Life with Mr. Creosote

Maitre d’: Good evening sir and how are we today?
Mr. Creosote: Better.
Maitre d’: Better?
Mr. Creosote: Better get a bucket. I’m gonna throw up.

Lead Babie had always planed to die while choking on vomit (but not their own) as their plane was crashing after bursting into flames but somehow the band members survived and Biff Brown is a famous singer songwriter and Darren Daz Cox is a genius artist!

Sometimes you need Monty Python to really explain the concept of your band..

 Dennis: Come and see the violence inherent in the system. Help! Help! I’m being repressed!
King Arthur: Bloody peasant!
Dennis: Oh, what a giveaway! Did you hear that? Did you hear that, eh? That’s what I’m on about! Did you see him repressing me? You saw him, Didn’t you?

Dingo: You must spank her well, and after you are done with her, you may deal with her as you like… and then… spank me.
All: And me. And me too. And me.
Dingo: Yes. Yes, you must give us all a good spanking.

Dingo: And after the spanking, the oral sex.

Galahad

: Well, I could stay a bit longer…

Lead Babie gigs often devolved into ‘bag lady’ skits (we’re punk rocker’s we don’t have to explain, we’re creative and eccentric!)

Maria the cleaning woman: I used to work in the Académie Française / but it didn’t do me any good at all. / And I once worked in the library in the Prado in Madrid / But it didn’t teach me nothing I recall. / And the Library of Congress you would have thought would hold some key / but it didn’t and neither did the Bodlean Library. / In The British Museum I hoped to find some clue / I worked there from nine till six / Read every volume through / But it didn’t teach me nothing about life’s mystery. / I just kept getting older, it got more difficult to see. / Till eventually me eyes went and me arthritis got bad. / So now I’m cleaning up in here but I can’t be really sad. / Cause you see I feel that life’s a game. / You sometimes win or lose. / And though I may be down right now at least I don’t work for Jews.

(we weren’t racist like Maria was though!)