Original Mixed Media Painting on Wood
by Jamaican Intuitive
Leonard Daley (1930 - 2006)
Untitled
Oil on Wood (Framed)
Size: 10.5" x 17.5"
An important outsider artist.
In the collection of the American Folk Art Museum.
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ABOUT THE ARTIST
Leonard Daley was born in
1930 in Point Hill, Jamaica. He started painting in the early sixties, though
no works done prior to 1979 have been discovered. Ranked among the masters of
Jamaican Intuitive art, Daley’s has evolved a highly complex pictorial space
where interlocking and superimposed forms present a kaleidoscopic montage-like
fusion of symbols, animals and demons. His frenzied, claustrophobic paintings
are in part the spontaneous expression of a visionary and part catharsis for
the grass-roots creator who bears the weight of ‘seeing’ the evils of our
times.
Daley, who has had no formal
art training, has exhibited widely in Jamaica, the USA, and Europe, including a
one man show in New York City’s Cavin Morris Gallery. Selected group
exhibitions include “Fifteen Intuitives”, the National Gallery of Jamaica; the
Annual National Exhibition, Jamaica, 1993; “Rastafarian Kunst”, Haus der
Kulturen der Wilt, Beklisand, Stuttgard, Germany, 1992; “Jamaican Intuitives”,
Commonwealth Institute, London, 1986. He has been featured in a number of
publications including “Modern Jamaican Art”, Ian Randle Publishers;
“Redemption Songs: The Self-Taught Artists of Jamaica”, Diggs Gallery
Publication; “Art Today”, Phaidon Press; and Raw Vision Magazine.
Of Leonard Daley, the art
journalist and critic Edward Gomez writes, “For me the late Leonard Daley may
well have produced one of the most original and impossible-to-classify bodies
of work I have ever seen. Partly abstract, partly surreal, partly realist it is
always spiritual”.
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Following is an essay
extracted and edited from the Home
and Away exhibition catalogue, London, 1998
Leonard Daley’s mural like outpourings
have all the power of Dubuffet’s Art Brut, or the Surrealist imagery of Andre
Masson, yet with none of the self-conscious denial employed by these modern
artists. In 1987 when Daley’s work was included in the Fifteen Intuitives
exhibition, David Boxer could still write with honesty that Leonard Daley had
no concept of his work as being art, in the sense of a commodity. He painted on
fragments of used tarpaulin and plywood, often utilizing both sides of these
surfaces and had no desire to title his work. Today, a realism tinged with
sadness is sensed in the fact that Daley now conforms to more formal methods of
presentation, using more durable and readily exhibited materials, suggesting
that even with the sensitive ‘protection’ of the National Gallery of Jamaica,
this intuitive is far more aware than he used to be. Nevertheless, his imagery
is still visually powerful.
To view Daley's work is to enter a
claustrophobic hysterical world of spirits, specters, and ‘bad-minded’ people.
One of Daley’s devices is to slice the head in profile thus revealing the inner
workings of the mind and the many thoughts, good and evil, that take place
there. Often the results are terrifying, since Daley’s assessment of the world
is a very judgmental one. For him the process of depiction is purgative, and
the imagery he displays, is often violent, bloody and cruel. Yet, the hellish
nature of his painting is not indicative of the artists personality, rather,
Daley’s work operates within a type of evangelical ethic, closely aligned to
the Pentecostal churches so prevalent in Jamaica. These churches preach a
gospel that acts as a kind of bridge between African spiritual beliefs and
Christian orthodoxy that suggest redemption through images that are at once
sacrificial and violent. The blood of the lamb that washes whiter than snow,
though gruesome, represents purity and salvation, in much the same way, Daley’s
works exorcise demons in order to cleanse and liberate the mind. He says…
‘All my work, its just
automatically.[sic] I close my eyes and I pray a lot. Sometimes tears fall
down…sometimes I sit down and look at the plain wall, and I can’t penetrate it.
And so I will use some water in my mouth, and spew it on the wall, and whatever
way it dries it comes out as a picture…I read it and the next thing I look at
the sunset and I look at the moon and sometimes when I am concerned about
certain situation I meditate. I don’t eat much food’.
Yet, like the surrealist Joan Miro’s work of the 1920s, Daley’s work is more
hallucinatory than visionary, a self-inflicted libation that produces horrific
imagery of nightmarish quality. In this world there is little light, a muddy
and bloody palette pervades, while animals and men mutate into monsters that
haunt every available space. Although we know this is a mental rather than a
physical space, its latent pantheism suggests a fascinating interpretation of
the world not altogether incredible. Certainly, the introduction of Daley’s
work within mainstream Jamaican art circles was greeted with an immediate
comprehension, since it seemed to join forces with the tormented configurations
of ‘new imagists’ such as Milton George and Omari Ra. Yet, Daley’s unique
vision is his own protection from being subsumed by any artistic movement. The
unique nature of his visions are such that they suggest biblical and
psychological rather than historical interpretations and it is perhaps these
considerations that will ensure that he continues to paint from intuition
rather than intellect.
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