ALABANDICADABRA

  'Cause and Effect' by Joel Bradley (text by Charles Bukowski). Pen and blood on paper. A small tribute. -JB

  'Cthulhu Insignia' by Joel Bradley. Acrylic and India ink. Shown here under different lights. Part of a greater foray into experimenting with stencils.  - JB

  Untitled by Joel Bradley A shining blade is drawn across the fleshy throat of the pig and crimson pearls spill forth in its cold wake, filling the eager, cupped hands of waiting children, Wide-eyed and bare-toothed; overflowing the fonts of innocence with the outpourings of viniferous veins. In the squalor of the sty, a church. The congregation howls and writhes, scant bodies frolicking in shit and blood, ecstatic in oblivion, an ancient faith without a name, a silent prayer to forgotten gods uttered by little mouths brimming with blood Still warm and mingling in the worldly filth at their feet. And when tallow candles are extinguished by trembling fingers, slick with the wines of mortality, and only cold Moon-light remains, All appears black before Her appalled face.     This is an older piece, written about this time of year back in 2021. It is in keeping with the style of some of my oldest poems, heavy on symbolic imagery and dictated more by 'stream of conscious' t...

  'Cthulhu' by Joel Bradley. Acrylic, mixed media on canvas board.

Constructing the Eidolon by Joel Bradley They came. From the dark, into the dark, unto the dark. They came. The twilight a-mutter with incantations that poison the lips that speak. Dirty hands, countless, clutching talismans of sympathy. Knotted wood and serpentine roots, sun-bleached bones, and the misshapen skulls of questionable beasts, still dressed in tatters of desiccated flesh. The feathers of nightbirds, twisted scraps of rusted metal, and sharp teeth found among the flowers. Stones from river and mountain, sand from desert and sea, the dust and ash of volcano and tomb. Rainbows of shards and splinters from shattered cathedral windows, and a thousand crooked pins and broken keys. Some give up their own flesh and organs, Still beating, held out or aloft in trembling hands, libating mortal dusts with the vital wines of life and death. Others fling their contributions of excrement and corruption, administering medicinal draughts of piss and bile, spitting curses and vomiting dogma...

I am creating this space to share my hitherto private artistic and literary efforts. I'm a 30-something man from New Zealand with a lifelong interest in art, writing, and music. I dabble in all three, and they tend to reflect my equally persistent fascination with themes of cosmic horror, death, perversion, beauty vs. ugliness, and esoterica such as alchemy and 'black magic'. In the coming days and months, I shall be uploading some of my work. I expect this to be a fairly slow process, in the beginning at least, as I am on the verge of being technologically retarded and am still wrapping my head around the notion of blogging and all it entails. But needs must when the Devil drives. I don't know that I am looking for anything in the act of sharing - praise, feedback, etc. The purpose is, perhaps, more in the notion that art of any kind is not useful or truly REALISED until it is received by an audience. The objective art is only half of the equation; it must be viewed in...