“Taunt Your Monster” says the title of one of Dan May’s images, and taunt them he does, in the process delighting us with a fascinating beastiary of odd flora and fauna. His creatures, monsters, occasional people and animal-like thingies inhabit charmingly odd environments that look like undersea landscapes or perhaps the ice caves of Muni Mula, or are often presented stark against backgrounds of big obvious brush strokes and textures of paint as paint.
May’s paintings carry echoes of Joan Miro and Yves Tanguy and he occasionally tips his hat to pop culture influences with tributes to the likes of Dr. Seuss and Tim Burton.
He works in acrylic on wood or canvas and varies between larger canvasses populated with multiple examples of his odd animals, plant things and and sometimes vaguely microbial or virus-like entities, and smaller works in which one or two are isolated.
May has worked extensively as an illustrator but now focuses more on painting and exhibiting as a gallery artist. His bio page includes a list of illustration clients and gallery exhibitions.
His web site includes two galleries that can be navigated by convenient arrows, sequence dots or by simply clicking on the images to move forward.
The link to “Blog” is actually to a Flickr space with multiple galleries that are considerably more extensive than the web site and includes blog-like entries on the main page.
There is a post about May on illustrationMundo and an interview on LCSV4.
Thanks for posting about Dan May!
I’ve not checked his site out for a while. His work is truly amazing. :)
You wrote:
“May’s paintings carry echoes of Joan Miro and Yves Tanguy and he occasionally tips his hat to pop culture influences with tributes to the likes of Dr. Seuss and Tim Burton.”
This is why I enjoy your blog so much: articulate, concise and insightful. In fact, one can see the influence of all four of those artists in the painting displayed immediately above your description. As usual, right on target. Thanks, Charley.
Isee more Kenny Sharf and Peter Saul than Yves Tanguey and Joan Miro but then I guess that’s trickle down aesthetics for you. Thanks for sharing. This is a great site. I visit every day. Thanks for your hard work.
That beige thing looks like a tooth. This image makes me think of creepy-crawly microscopic things in the mouth. I think I’ll go brush my teeth.
I love your blog. It is nice to see bios for artists I know well, those I have only heard of, and those I have not heard of all presented with respect and clarity.