Bob Dylan’s Women

If his paintings are anything to go by, Bob Dylan likes his women hefty. Or to use a more artistic term, “Rubenesque”. Dylans’s paintings are on show at the Halcyon Gallery in London. The pictures originated from a series of small pencil sketches which he made whilst on tour between 1989 and 1992. Then, in 2007, he had the drawings scanned onto scaled-up sheets of paper and he coloured them in, sometimes creating several paintings from one original sketch. Many of the drawings are of the furniture in his hotel rooms (there are lots of TVs), many of the scene from the hotel window. 

Dylan has produced hundreds of paintings by this method. And the price? When I enquired at the Halcyon Gallery I was told that the starting price is £102,000. As he can knock off half a dozen in an afternoon that’s not bad. Dylan has often been accused of selling out, but never of selling short.
​
One of Dylan’s early recordings was “When I Paint My Masterpiece”, which perspicaciously refers to doing his painting in his hotel room. This slideshow is accompanied by Grateful Dead’s version of the song. Grateful Dead fans are known as ‘Deadheads’. Which reminds me- What does a Deadhead say when he runs out of drugs?- “My God, this band is crap”.