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Ascetic hedonist, lowbrow intellectual and saturnine
victim of Peter Pan syndrome, David Aronson observes the nightmare
of history from his oneiric bathysphere and brews up potent,
chthonic images in his alembics and retorts. Once thought to
have been born fully grown from his father's left temple, It
is now known that he spent his early years in a traveling minstrel
show and petting zoo. His mother was a tap dancer and professional
mourner, and his father a black-face clown and noted kabbalist.
As a child, Popeye cartoons revealed to David the secrets of
the Tao. David is a militant agnostic, a disgruntled, cynical
tree-hugger, and an unrepentant, closet subversive, forever peeing
in the cultural soup.
David Aronson lives and works in the Philadelphia area. His quirky, offbeat illustration, drawings and paintings combine traditional media such as watercolor, ink, graphite and colored pencil with digital media and digital collage. His work ranges from whimsical to fantastic, from highly stylized to realistically rendered, and has been called unique and highly creative and imaginative. It mixes lowbrow with fine art elements and often employs unusual juxtapositions. Thematically, David often delves into the realms of mythology and psychology. He has created art for book covers, magazines, CD covers, music posters and tour t-shirts. David is also a painter and has completed several public and private commissions. His digital animation has been featured on MTV2 and Fuse and his drawings and illustrations have appeared in Silkmilk, Ritual, Inside Artzine, Khooligan, and the anthology Dark Stories by Dark Artists, as well as being exhibited nationally in galleries and museum shows. He is an art teacher, working with both children and adults and teaching several different media, and was once the sole owner and operator of a small art school in the Philadelphia suburbs. He is also a certified hypnotherapist, holistic healer, professional astrologer, and published poet.
What some people have said about David's art:
Each one of your pictures contains a hundred different
stories. Your art's an uncanny marriage of the irrational and
rational, of chaos and the most exacting, exquisite order.
Tom Bradley, author
tombradley.org/
Aronson is one of the most powerful / disturbing living artists...putting an erotic spirituality, equal to that of William Blake, into a nightmare that is darker than H.R. Giger's.
Frank Moore
Cherotic Revolutionary Magazine
www.eroplay.com
David Aronson's work is nothing short of digital alchemy; a spiritual, energetic example of subversion that does not detract from the reverence for his chosen subject matter. To look upon his work is to see through the eyes of a man achingly familiar with a broad spectrum of emotion. It is, quite simply, Truth, filtered through a stained glass window in another world.
Glossolalia Black
www.oddculture.com
I'm always on the look out for works that play with
symbols in interesting ways. Or, to be more precise, I'm looking
for those artists who have managed to tap into 'the ancient image
language' which underlies our myth, dreams, and art. I could
see this in your work. You have the poet's touch for arranging
images in such a way that they resonate deeply with one another.
The area of your site that interested me the most (we all have
our preferences...) was your digital rendering of the Tarot Arcana.
This was GOOD. As a matter of fact, it was great, grand, deep
and mind-sweeping.
Laurence Caruana
The Visionary Review
If you were ever a fan of Omni magazine or Salvador Dali you will be thrilled by David Aronson's work. He conjures up horrific psychological landscapes in his surrealist cauldron; personal exorcisms writhing with erotic fantasies. His work also possess a hidden warmth, an empathy, which is woven throughout his nightmares serving to make his work embraceable. Whether this is done intentionally or as a cathartic result of the art itself is a mystery. And this would be just one of many dark mysteries inspired by David's art.
Robin Parry
Club Nostradamus
Origivation Magazine
Your artwork is... beautiful dizzying terrifying breathtaking
intense overwhelming healing flawless and addictive. If sex with
the devil could be made into chocolates filled with honey-infused
whiskey... thats how your images taste to my eyes.
Maya
Lead vocals, guitar
Mother Goddess, NYC
The Alchemical Wedding flies in the face of the notion
that American Tarot Art is boring. Here is a series of major
arcana interpretations by David Aronson that hangs together,
takes risks, and shows a profound appreciation for what it's
all about.
The Voice of Thoth
I believe your art to be mind-blowing, in the very
noble tradition of beautiful things that expand the mind (from
Durer to friendly fungi). The tarot deck has the creepy elegance
of Witkin and an amusing darkness all your own.
Laurent Liscia
http://www.webmotion.com
I have studied the Holocaust extensively. I feel your
art is without question the most accurate and vivid depiction
of the hell of the holocaust. As memory fades and survivors die,
your paintings, for those that view them, will ensure that at
least some people remember the truth of the hell of hells. I
have studied the Holocaust for more than 13 years and your paintings
both disturbed me and gave me pause. True exellence.
Robert Rosenberg
The dark moon series is very interesting, darkly humourous and disturbingly beautiful.
Nicole Steen
The Pop Tarts
http://www.thetartgallery.com/popindex.html
I found your images at remember.org and was moved
to tears. Your work starkly portrays the fear, pain, loss and
grief the Shoah has caused for so many people and I thank you
for the opportunity to contemplate and experience at least some
small part of the Holocaust. Thank you for displaying your work
at remember.org, and for finding the creativity and courage to
respectfully and powerfully broach such a difficult and important
subject.
Maggie Shapiro
Your pen and ink drawings, if not done by you, could
only have been produced if Albrecht Durer had been influenced
by Robert Crumb and then dropped acid. Hieronymus Bosch and Otto
Dix had a child and it is you, sir!
Fred Leary, painter
The Art of David Aronson is twisted and beautiful.
He is extremely talented with many different types of media.
You might find his message to be disturbing, but you cannot deny
his talent.
Joey Espinosa, illustrator
...David Aronson uses the tarot form to explore images
that are both disturbing and at the same time so beautifully
crafted that they engage us and perhaps this is the nature of
the alchemical wedding which he is inviting us to join. This
has been created using computer graphic collage of astounding
quality. Aronson is certainly a master of this medium...
Adam McLean, author/publisher
http://www.alchemywebsite.com/
...we are very much interested in your bold colors,
characters in tension, riskiness, playfulness...your work seems
to be very smart, sophisticated, and uses color in a bold way.
Sara Kaplan, editor
Fugue Literary Magazine
Your work is at once difficult, beautiful, and intensely
affecting.
Thank you for giving voice to the unspeakable and indescribable.
David Gilleece, photographer
http://www.davidgilleece.com/index.html
David Aronson's graphics are a pure joy. Reminiscent
of the incisive and iconoclastic cartoons of a great alternative
publishing era.
Linda Rowntree
Global Tapestry Journal
Your work is staggering in its bravery, technique
and themes. I've been amused, enriched and engaged viewing your
site.
Glen Hansen
Artist
Your vision is awesome, amusing, disturbing, touching,
and inspiring.
Just what I needed to see.
Alden Cole
http://www.consciousworldart.com
I've been exploring your work online and am absolutely floored by your talent, by its breadth and depth. Your artwork is not only masterful in the skill department, but uncompromising in its truth-telling... so evocative, potent, moving... seems like there's absolutely nowhere you're not willing to go.
Rosy Aronson, Ph.D. (no relation)
http://rosyaronson.com/
...As for Aronson's style, it is rooted in the lowbrow art movement, which combines pop art, children's illustration, fine art...it pretty much appropriates everything. The point, I think, is to eschew limitations, both cultural and social. As with a lot of lowbrow art, Aronson often mixes humor and horror for a rather peculiar effect that is its own kind of transgression. The fact that we don't always know how to feel about these pieces is, I think, precisely the point.
Pip Starr
pigtailsinpaint.wordpress.com
David Aronson is an artistic psychonaut, an explorer
of the personal and collective underworld; a shamanistic naturalist,
recording the flora and fauna of the places in the heart and
mind where the sun refuses to shine. His disturbing, atavistic
images give a voice to the shadow; to mute suffering and twisted
emotions long-denied.
Or, if all this is too artsy-fartsy for you, he just likes to
draw weird, creepy shit.
Artist's Statement:
My art is about what I think and feel and it's brutally honest. It's honest because I want you to know who I really am. It's about the stuff that's swimming around in my subconscious. It's about the stuff that scared me and made me angry when I was a kid; stuff that I couldn't talk about then. It's symbolic because symbols are powerful and interesting and people can see a lot more of themselves in a symbol than in something that's literally spelled out. It's fun and interesting when people can find their own meanings in my art based on who they are as individuals. Sometimes I don't really know what my art's about--at least not consciously. It's dark and disturbing because there are things that need to be talked about and not swept under the rug. It's humorous and whimsical, because life is so strange and outrageous that you need to have a sense of humor to survive sometimes. It's about using your imagination. The artist sees beyond his everyday world and the limitations he's been taught and he invites you to join him.
I teach after-school art classes for children here in Philadelphia. While observing some young boys drawing superheroes and monsters, I commented to one of my assistants that these were the same kinds of things I used to draw as a child. Then I realized that, in essence, that's still what I draw. The superheroes have become archetypal figures within the collective unconscious and the monsters now come from the Jungian "shadow.''
If I had to describe my artistic intentions, I would have to say that they were "discovered'' after the fact rather than having been a conscious starting point. The first would be to allow the subconscious mind, the deeper hidden portions of the psyche, to express themselves, much in the manner of the original surrealists. These images can range from whimsical to absurd to perverse to terrifying. I do not censor them and I rarely know what they mean consciously. The second intention would be healing. Psychic wholeness is achieved by allowing the "dark'' elements of my psyche to move into the conscious light of day. By depicting these disowned aspects of self, I accept them and integrate them, thus bringing about wholeness and releasing trapped energy and power. These images are often quite powerful because they speak in the symbolic language of the deep psyche-the language of dream and myth.
Stylistically I have many influences, from the afore-mentioned
surrealists to the Flemish Renaissance painters, Albrecht Durer,
and Medeival illuminated manuscripts to the underground comix
of the 60s and 70s, along with many many others.
Besides being an artist and an art teacher (I owned and single-handedly
operated a small art school for over two years), I am also a
healer, working with several modalities of hands-on energy healing
along with hypnotherapy and past-life regression.
For information about commissions and illustration work you can email me at kernunnos1963@gmail.com
My other sites: Holistic healing, hypnotherapy, astrology
and tarot.
www.alchemicalwedding.com/healing
www.alchemicalwedding.com/astrology
Click here to read an interview
with me from the webzine Feed Me Cool Shit.
Click here to read an interview
with me from the Russian magazine Khooligan.
Click here to read an interview
with me by Claudio Parentella for the Italian webzine Komix Fumetti
@ 360.
Click here for a dialogue with
visonary artist Laurence Caruana on art, magick and mysticism.
Click here to read an interview
with me from the webzine Ichromatography.
Click here to read an interview
with me by Glossolalia Black for the webzine Oddculture.
Click here to read another
interview with me by Claudio Parentela for The eXTra finGer.
Click Here to read
an interview with me by James Curcio for the webzine Alterati
Click here to read an article
on my work translated from the Italian magazine Ritual;
click here to see the original
article in Italian with illustrations
Click here to read a review
of Shadows in Heaven from Australian magazine Synergy.
Click here to read an interview
with me about art education from the Phila. Arts in Education
Partnership.
Click here to read
an interview with me on sex and art from the people at Passional,
a sex toy shop and erotic art gallery in Philly where I had a
show.
Click here to read an interview with me by David Herrl for the arts web-zine Subtle Tea
Click here to see my very first monograph-created by 11th grade student Ashley Owens
For those of you into astrology, click here to see my birth chart.
Check me out on Facebook and DeviantArt
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