Danny Malboeuf
Encyclopedia
Danny Malboeuf is a visual artist
and musician
from Statesville, North Carolina
. As kolaboy he is a member of the breedArt collective and a Senior Member of deviantART
, where four of his paintings have received the site’s top award. His musical project is Cowgirl in the Snow.
. Working mainly in acrylics, he paints in an allegorical figurative
style that combines surrealist, symbolist
and pre-Raphaelite sensibilities, often in conjunction with subtle pop-culture
references. Malboeuf counts music and literature as his greatest sources of inspiration; specific artistic influences include the painters Arnold Boecklin, John Martin
, Ferdinand Khnopff, and Leon Frédéric. While many of his paintings deal with mythological and religious themes, the frequent incorporation of sci-fi and pop-culture
imagery from the artist's youth establishes tentative connections with movements such as pop surrealism. He has a strong bias towards painting female subjects, "perhaps because the essence of female is more poetic, and the male more prosaic."
Malboeuf is represented by The Queen’s Gallery and Art Center in Charlotte, North Carolina
, and is a member of the international Surreal Visionary Art Collective
. In the past twenty years, his work has been exhibited in numerous solo and joint exhibitions, including one at the Huntington Museum of Art
, and his paintings can now be found in private collections in Europe, America, Asia and Australia.
Malboeuf's outsider
leanings and penchant for dark themes and forbidden mixtures can be disquieting or even controversial. “If you've never contemplated the odd, spellbinding paintings by Charlotte original Danny Malboeuf, now's your chance to catch up. An uneasy feeling mixed with awe at the artist's painterly skill is not unusual with these acrylics. Holy Water and Consecration of St. Joan both deliver a biting admixture of religion and sexuality.” Another critique reads "This artist's idiosyncratic slice of surrealism, dark and Gothic, is imbued with a strong dose of high-techno metallica in a strange quasi-religious vein that incites uneasy thoughts. If Edgar Allan Poe
and H.P. Lovecraft rose from the dead and co-wrote a series of stories — and Max Ernst
collaborated with Dante Gabriel Rossetti
using Giger's Alien as a prototype to illustrate these collaborative tales — the result might resemble Malboueuf's series of images. [...] Malboeuf's intensely symbolic paintings do occasionally depict a sunnier mood, [...] but more common is a decaying, bittersweet morbidity — futuristic pre-Rapahelite paintings corrupted by the forces of the darkside. There's a repellent attraction to this work that's compelling."
Online, where he uses the screen-name kolaboy, Malboeuf is a member of the breedArt collective; he also holds Senior Member status at deviantART
, where his online gallery has had over 213 000 page-views and is subscribed to by some 2700 members. He is listed in deviantART's Top Artists directory and has four times won the site’s top Daily Deviation award, a recent win being accompanied by the editorial observation "One of dA's finest Surreal artists, kolaboy never ceases to amaze."
Three of Malboeuf’s paintings have been published in Mostro, an Italian-language literary/art journal, with one gracing the cover. His paintings have also been featured on the cover of OLOGY magazine, with the editorial comment "Speaking of things that are sweet, check out this issue’s cover artist, Danny Malboeuf. Take a good look, folks, because long after we are all dead, people will still be talking about his work." The same outlet has also showcased some of Malboeuf's writing. His artwork is featured on the cover of Bandersnatch, a hardcover anthology of horror stories, as well as on the cover of the Ruby Vileos album This is the Day. His painting The Eternal was featured in Web Digest Weekly. Three of his paintings are reproduced in the literary/arts journal Antithesis Common.
Malboeuf has also provided two invited pieces for the Pornsaints website; his art was included in their 2008 exhibition at A&D Gallery in central London, and their 2010 exhibition at the Birdhouse Gallery in Austin, Texas. Firebird was chosen to illustrate the exhibition review in the Austin Chronicle; as arts critic Wayne Brenner observed, "[M]ost of the depictions of saintly pornstars are depictions of women. Which is fine by this (admittedly biased) reviewer ... especially when the artwork is as gorgeous as Danny Malboeuf's finely detailed and cyberpunky Firebird painting". Also in 2010, guest curators Heinali and Matt Finney reviewed Malboeuf's work (in a series whose other subjects were Jackson Pollock
, Francis Bacon, and Raymond Pettibon
) for The 405, describing him as "a Surrealist for our times". The October 2010 issue of visual arts magazine n-sphere featured Malboeuf's art on the cover and in the lead article http://sfere.ro/nsphere/dl/nSPHERE_oct2010issue.pdf, accompanied by a 26-work exhibition in The Spheres guest gallery. On the academic front, Malboeuf's painting Holy Water is the subject of a Master's dissertation. Early in 2011, Malboeuf published an illustrated book, Saestralle - A Tale of the North, http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1961109 which presents a poetic legend imagined in the Arctic region.
Solo exhibitions (incomplete, 1990-1995 only)
, and shoegaze genres, releasing candy-coated dream pop
songs in the spirit of Sarah Records
and 4AD
. Musical influences include Ultra Vivid Scene
and The Records
. A review reads: “Cowgirl in the Snow makes addictive lo-fi indie pop, with guitars drenched in effects … Twee pop at its finest.” Danny Malboeuf's brother is David, who is the musician D.M. Frankin Kane and his father is the bluegrass fiddler "Red" Tommy Malboeuf.
Visual arts
The visual arts are art forms that create works which are primarily visual in nature, such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, and often modern visual arts and architecture...
and musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....
from Statesville, North Carolina
Statesville, North Carolina
Statesville is a city located in Iredell County, North Carolina, United States and was named an All-America City in 1997 and 2009. The population was 24,633 at the 2010 census...
. As kolaboy he is a member of the breedArt collective and a Senior Member of deviantART
DeviantArt
deviantART is an online community showcasing various forms of user-made artwork. It was first launched on August 7, 2000 by Scott Jarkoff, Matthew Stephens, Angelo Sotira and others. deviantArt, Inc...
, where four of his paintings have received the site’s top award. His musical project is Cowgirl in the Snow.
Art
Danny Malboeuf is a self-trained artist/illustratorVisual arts
The visual arts are art forms that create works which are primarily visual in nature, such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, and often modern visual arts and architecture...
. Working mainly in acrylics, he paints in an allegorical figurative
Figurative art
Figurative art, sometimes written as figurativism, describes artwork—particularly paintings and sculptures—which are clearly derived from real object sources, and are therefore by definition representational.-Definition:...
style that combines surrealist, symbolist
Symbolism (arts)
Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...
and pre-Raphaelite sensibilities, often in conjunction with subtle pop-culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
references. Malboeuf counts music and literature as his greatest sources of inspiration; specific artistic influences include the painters Arnold Boecklin, John Martin
John Martin (painter)
John Martin was an English Romantic painter, engraver and illustrator.-Biography:Martin was born in July 1789, in a one-room family cottage, at Haydon Bridge, near Hexham in Northumberland, the 4th son of Fenwick Martin, a one time fencing master...
, Ferdinand Khnopff, and Leon Frédéric. While many of his paintings deal with mythological and religious themes, the frequent incorporation of sci-fi and pop-culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
imagery from the artist's youth establishes tentative connections with movements such as pop surrealism. He has a strong bias towards painting female subjects, "perhaps because the essence of female is more poetic, and the male more prosaic."
Malboeuf is represented by The Queen’s Gallery and Art Center in Charlotte, North Carolina
Charlotte, North Carolina
Charlotte is the largest city in the U.S. state of North Carolina and the seat of Mecklenburg County. In 2010, Charlotte's population according to the US Census Bureau was 731,424, making it the 17th largest city in the United States based on population. The Charlotte metropolitan area had a 2009...
, and is a member of the international Surreal Visionary Art Collective
Visionary art
Visionary art is art that purports to transcend the physical world and portray a wider vision of awareness including spiritual or mystical themes, or is based in such experiences.-Definition:...
. In the past twenty years, his work has been exhibited in numerous solo and joint exhibitions, including one at the Huntington Museum of Art
Huntington Museum of Art
The Huntington Museum of Art is an art museum located in the hills above Ritter Park in Huntington, West Virginia. It is the largest art museum between "Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Richmond" and contains numerous collections, exhibitions, education programs and nature trails that sprawl on a campus...
, and his paintings can now be found in private collections in Europe, America, Asia and Australia.
Malboeuf's outsider
Outsider Art
The term outsider art was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for art brut , a label created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture; Dubuffet focused particularly on art by insane-asylum inmates.While...
leanings and penchant for dark themes and forbidden mixtures can be disquieting or even controversial. “If you've never contemplated the odd, spellbinding paintings by Charlotte original Danny Malboeuf, now's your chance to catch up. An uneasy feeling mixed with awe at the artist's painterly skill is not unusual with these acrylics. Holy Water and Consecration of St. Joan both deliver a biting admixture of religion and sexuality.” Another critique reads "This artist's idiosyncratic slice of surrealism, dark and Gothic, is imbued with a strong dose of high-techno metallica in a strange quasi-religious vein that incites uneasy thoughts. If Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
and H.P. Lovecraft rose from the dead and co-wrote a series of stories — and Max Ernst
Max Ernst
Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...
collaborated with Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...
using Giger's Alien as a prototype to illustrate these collaborative tales — the result might resemble Malboueuf's series of images. [...] Malboeuf's intensely symbolic paintings do occasionally depict a sunnier mood, [...] but more common is a decaying, bittersweet morbidity — futuristic pre-Rapahelite paintings corrupted by the forces of the darkside. There's a repellent attraction to this work that's compelling."
Online, where he uses the screen-name kolaboy, Malboeuf is a member of the breedArt collective; he also holds Senior Member status at deviantART
DeviantArt
deviantART is an online community showcasing various forms of user-made artwork. It was first launched on August 7, 2000 by Scott Jarkoff, Matthew Stephens, Angelo Sotira and others. deviantArt, Inc...
, where his online gallery has had over 213 000 page-views and is subscribed to by some 2700 members. He is listed in deviantART's Top Artists directory and has four times won the site’s top Daily Deviation award, a recent win being accompanied by the editorial observation "One of dA's finest Surreal artists, kolaboy never ceases to amaze."
Three of Malboeuf’s paintings have been published in Mostro, an Italian-language literary/art journal, with one gracing the cover. His paintings have also been featured on the cover of OLOGY magazine, with the editorial comment "Speaking of things that are sweet, check out this issue’s cover artist, Danny Malboeuf. Take a good look, folks, because long after we are all dead, people will still be talking about his work." The same outlet has also showcased some of Malboeuf's writing. His artwork is featured on the cover of Bandersnatch, a hardcover anthology of horror stories, as well as on the cover of the Ruby Vileos album This is the Day. His painting The Eternal was featured in Web Digest Weekly. Three of his paintings are reproduced in the literary/arts journal Antithesis Common.
Malboeuf has also provided two invited pieces for the Pornsaints website; his art was included in their 2008 exhibition at A&D Gallery in central London, and their 2010 exhibition at the Birdhouse Gallery in Austin, Texas. Firebird was chosen to illustrate the exhibition review in the Austin Chronicle; as arts critic Wayne Brenner observed, "[M]ost of the depictions of saintly pornstars are depictions of women. Which is fine by this (admittedly biased) reviewer ... especially when the artwork is as gorgeous as Danny Malboeuf's finely detailed and cyberpunky Firebird painting". Also in 2010, guest curators Heinali and Matt Finney reviewed Malboeuf's work (in a series whose other subjects were Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock
Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...
, Francis Bacon, and Raymond Pettibon
Raymond Pettibon
Raymond Pettibon is an American artist who currently lives and works in Venice Beach, California.-Early life:...
) for The 405, describing him as "a Surrealist for our times". The October 2010 issue of visual arts magazine n-sphere featured Malboeuf's art on the cover and in the lead article http://sfere.ro/nsphere/dl/nSPHERE_oct2010issue.pdf, accompanied by a 26-work exhibition in The Spheres guest gallery. On the academic front, Malboeuf's painting Holy Water is the subject of a Master's dissertation. Early in 2011, Malboeuf published an illustrated book, Saestralle - A Tale of the North, http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1961109 which presents a poetic legend imagined in the Arctic region.
Solo exhibitions (incomplete, 1990-1995 only)
- 1990 First Union National Bank, Statesville, NC.
- 1995 Beauties of Provenient Grace, Queens Gallery and Art Center, Charlotte, NC.
- 1995 Exposure of Conviction, Rowe Art Gallery, Univ. North Carolina at Charlotte, NC.
Music
A singer/songwriter and instrumentalist, Malboeuf’s solo music project is Cowgirl in the Snow; it straddles the indie, tweeTwee
The word twee occurs in various terms:*twee pop and twee, alternative names for indie pop*Kill Twee Pop!, the first studio album by Sarandon*Twee River Redfin , a species of ray-finned fish in the Cyprinidae family...
, and shoegaze genres, releasing candy-coated dream pop
Dream pop
Dream pop is a subgenre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom in the mid-1980s, when bands like The Passions, Dif Juz, Lowlife and A.R. Kane began fusing post-punk and ethereal experiments with bittersweet pop melodies into dreamy, sensual soundscapes. The term was almost...
songs in the spirit of Sarah Records
Sarah Records
Sarah Records was a UK independent record label active between 1987 and 1995, best known for its recordings of indie pop.The label was formed in Bristol in 1987 by Clare Wadd and Matt Haynes, and grew out of the fanzine scene at the time, Haynes having previously edited Are You Scared To Get...
and 4AD
4AD
4AD is a British independent record label that was started in 1979 by Ivo Watts-Russell and Peter Kent, funded by Beggars Banquet Records, and is still active today...
. Musical influences include Ultra Vivid Scene
Ultra Vivid Scene
Ultra Vivid Scene was an American alternative rock band, started by Kurt Ralske.Former Nothing But Happiness and Crash guitarist Ralske started Ultra Vivid Scene in 1987, was signed to 4AD Records in 1988, and released his first UVS EP, She Screamed, in 1988...
and The Records
The Records
The Records were an English power pop band in the late 1970s. Allmusic notes that they are often referred to as the "British Big Star". They are best remembered for the hit single and cult favourite "Starry Eyes".-History:...
. A review reads: “Cowgirl in the Snow makes addictive lo-fi indie pop, with guitars drenched in effects … Twee pop at its finest.” Danny Malboeuf's brother is David, who is the musician D.M. Frankin Kane and his father is the bluegrass fiddler "Red" Tommy Malboeuf.
External links
- Malboeuf's gallery and journal on deviantART.
- deviantART News: interview with Malboeuf, 28 January 2009.
- Malboeuf's paintings at The Queen’s Gallery and Art Center, Charlotte, NC.
- Danny Malboeuf - Surreal Art Collective
- Personal reflections: 'Les Très Riches Heures' and 'The Art of Kolaboy'
- 'From Balthus to Beksinski: the Art of Danny Malboeuf' - essay on deviantART, republished at PornSaints. Print-friendly PDF.
- Cowgirl in the Snow at CNET Download.com; Cowgirl in the Snow at Soundclick.com; Cowgirl in the Snow on MySpace
- Ekphrasis on Malboeuf's She is Love, I am Dust and The Adoration of the Rose.