Heracleamantigazziani
UPDATE! New remix of the battle scene video.
Click here to open in a new window for fullscreen viewing option.
Revived project from 2018, conceived of as material for a show at The Tech Garden in Syracuse with THE END OF THE WORLD as its theme. I did the lost Bimini Road, Lighthouses (at the end of the world there, get it?) and the Mighty Hogweed series. Which were increasingly large and more ambitious attempts to visualize battle between mankind and the Giant Hogweed in "The Return of the Giant Hogweed" by British rock band Genesis from their 1971 album "Nursery Cryme".
First the excitement of re-discovering the works for the first time since maybe 2019.
Click here to open video in a new window for fullscreen viewing option. Has the older version of the battle video but leaving that as-is for now.
For reference, here's the entire piece of music in question. Makes good reading music.
"The Return of the Giant Hogweed" by Genesis, 2007 Remaster
Apologies for any forced ads!
Toxic Heracleamantigazziani, the Giant Hogweed. An invasive species introduced to the UK from Russia in the later 19th century and was considered a serious threat to the British ecology once its traits became known. Its spread ran unchecked for several decades until a national eradication scheme was implemented. While resembling benign Queen Anne's Lace its sap is toxic to humans and animals, its thorns sharp enough to cause bleeding, and chokes out all other plantlife in the plots it infests.
Genesis onstage from 1973 with then singer Peter Gabriel in his Flower Man mask he would don at a key moment in the band's majestic 1972 magnum opus "Supper's Ready". He only wore the mask & played that persona during "Supper's Ready", which Pete attributed to British children's show characters Bill and Ben the Flower Pot Men.
TURN AND RUN
That is kind of scary, with his stage makeup for other sections of their live act. All I knew when I was fourteen and heard the Hogweed song was that this was the guy who wore the Flower Man mask. And would imagine Gabriel donning the mask for the climactic finish of the song, when the band pulls out all the stops as the Hogweeds vanquish over humanity for having trashed this planet and its ecologies.
"The Return of the Giant Hogweed" Live on PopShop, Belgian Television 1972
Apologies for any forced ads!
Well he didn't wear it, but he does (very carefully) gets rough with his microphone stand there at the end, and it's always a joy to watch Steve Hackett play his guitar parts when the camera operator allows us to. The song was on the nightly setlist of what is known as Black Show, before the costuming when Peter would wear the black ensemble seen in the above performance. As their catalog of songs to play increased and Gabriel's stage personas become more complex the song was dropped.
Well ... Maybe with some work.
So no, Peter Gabriel did not wear his flower mask for "The Return of the Giant Hogweed" but with some artistic license I used the idea of it as a visual motif for this army of walking human size plant monsters. Dangerous too, lethal to humans, with both dandelion thorn sharp hands, the strength of small trees, and spewing a poison that makes that Death Sushi poison Homer Simpson ate seem like a belt of decent Scotch.
Hogweed Thrall Study, acrylics on wood 8 x 24 inches or so. Did a group of them to help design a relatively simple character to replicate for the Flowerman Monster army. The painting was left unfinished before I'd started filling in the details. Am about to try again.
Brainstorm sketch for the composition, fall 2017.
Blue humans at right, green Hogweeds to the left.
Sources of ideas at play were World War One battlefield imagery, paintings by Otto Dix, and pre-20th century battlefield artworks of massive scale. Usually with expansive titles that go on and on, of which mine is a sort of parody. Of particular inspiration was the Gettysburg Cyclorama, a 360 degree work which surrounds the viewer with a human scale depiction of the battle.
"Anzac Troops Charging Turkish Trench", Galipoli Campaign.
Some of my charging humans are based on a reverse of this image.
The Cyclorama is not just painted either, much of the presentation hinges on the use of cutouts, 3d diorama elements and forced perspective tricks. All of which I have in mind for a larger "human scale" version of this composition, with the painting shown here a working sketch on trying to scale the motif up to larger proportions. The toy piece found object box paintings are a scaled down version of the concept translated to a size I could work on in my Lunar Module during pandemic quarantine.
"Totem Setup" from October 2022, using toy pieces sent by my fellow plastic figure collector and artist/musician Mark Dreez. Using a forced perspective trick to try and make the scene look epic. It can then be printed or projected onto larger surfaces to be traced, then and painted over like a giant coloring book. Solves the rendering precision and unlocks the potential of larger scales. To a degree I never need bother with freehand sketching anymore especially if it's proven a hinderance to creating new work.
Hogweed Studies, January 2018 4x6 inches acrylics on wood.
As to resolving the larger painting it crossed my mind when making the video that I can also use posable action figures generate pix matching poses which prove bothersome, print and make cutouts to collage into place. So this Hogweed project was a key evolution step: The frustration of not being able to realize what I wanted to see drove me to discover new solutions. Finally ready to try putting them into play, and regard this painting as Unfinished Business.
"The Final Onslaught of the Mighty Hogweed, Threatening the Human Race"
(2018) Acrylics and Pastel on Canvas, 66 x 30 Inches
Part of it I'm actually quite pleased with as-is, especially as nicely chosen digital pix. But the work was left "unfinished" once I decided that the precision of rendering for the human forms was beyond what I was capable of at that time. Feeling ready to try again.
The mass of Hogweed creatures shambling out of the weeds & sumac hedges down there by the freeway. Now overrunning the park and its sculpture garden, a teeming horde of Hogweeds stretching back as far as the eye can see, At the end three massive Mighty Hogweed giants lumber, crushing cars and tossing apart the shopping center like Godzilla's.
A ragtag band of humanity gathering to try and stem the onslaught, battling from the remnants of the trashed Statue of Liberty from "The Planet of the Apes". Which was a chance element, the beginning sketches of a Marilyn Monroe portrait the artist whom the canvas was estated from had left undone. So David's Marilyn lives on, and the battle design was adapted to accommodate the face while using the body contours to suggest how the terrain was shaped.
My JDHS classmate Philip Modesti USMC (Retired) on the tank there, shooting incindary rounds at the surprisingly flammable Hogweeds. They come right apart in this spray of green muck that looks like guacamole but is quite toxic.
Carnage. Heavy losses to both sides and the Hogweeds appear to have the upper hand.
Spewing their venom. They can also spit thorns, and up close use their Hogweed hands for melee combat to tear human bodies limb from limb. You stay away from them, see, even though some are smiling.
Humans responding with giant backpack canisters of weed killer. That was intended to be a self portrait image at left in the hazmat suit with the hose. Will finish it.
My best attempt at being gruesome. Will enjoy filling that in.
I'll be at that bench decent weather permitting, while adapting the basement into a new studio any painting instructor would be proud to invite their class to visit. More on the project soon.
Once more for good measure. Very pleased with this edit!
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