Paintings by Rohan Quine

I painted the following 18 pictures from 1980 to 1987. Shown below in reverse order of creation, the more recent eight are in oil paint and the earlier 10 are in gouache.

Many of them hung on the walls of my three apartments in New York City: first at 49 West 11 Street in Greenwich Village; then at 126 East 4 Street in the East Village; and then in 190 Norfolk Street #9 on the Lower East Side with Cradeaux. In the two photos lower down this page, which were snapped at a couple of parties that we gave in the last of those three apartments, six of the paintings can be seen on the walls behind us.

In the photo where I’m in the purple polo-neck and purple tights, my desk is behind me at one of our fifth-floor windows on Norfolk Street (which looked west from the south-east corner of Houston Street, towards the World Trade Center). Around my desk can be seen parts of three of the below paintings: Fear at the upper left of the photo; She’ll Turn before the Shadow at the upper right; and Fried Eggs by Moonlight at the lower right.

The other photo below, of Cradeaux and me, shows parts of another three paintings: Sublime at the upper right edge; Sick Beauty halfway down the left edge; and just underneath that, Silence in the Tunnel.

(19) Together Alone by Rohan Quine, 1987 (oil).

 

(18) Whim by Rohan Quine, 1986 (oil).

 

(17) Sublime by Rohan Quine, 1985 (oil, with two photos cut from paper magazines).

 

(16) Conflux by Rohan Quine, 1983 & 1985 (oil).

 

(15) She’ll Turn before the Shadow by Rohan Quine, 1984 (oil).

 

(14) Silence in the Tunnel by Rohan Quine, 1984 (oil).

 

(13) Corn in Flames by Rohan Quine, 1984 (oil).

 

(12) Just an Illusion by Rohan Quine, 1983 (oil).

Inside the tear-drop-shaped vision of a stylised heaven being ejaculated in Just an Illusion, there’s a yellow path between trees, which I mention in my novella Hallucination in Hong Kong. This mention occurs in a passage that I’ve excerpted as a brief video-book teaser called “rotting garden-land of heaven”—a teaser that can be seen at https://vimeo.com/rohanquine/teaser-2vi-rotting-garden-land-of-heaven. The passage reads: “Round a corner (once I painted it), a vision: down a straight yellow path to a valley through a vast undulation of green bubble trees […], toward but never nearer to a river at the bottom on the other side of which ran ranges of hills, growing infinitesimally small and ever clearer till at last they were bent round, tucked up and swallowed in a haemorrhage of permanently disappearing sun…”

 

(11) Sick Beauty by Rohan Quine, 1983 (gouache).

 

(10) Fried Eggs by Moonlight by Rohan Quine, 1983 (gouache).

 

(9) Fear by Rohan Quine, 1983 (gouache).

 

(8) Revelation by Rohan Quine, 1982 (gouache).

 

(7) Cell by Rohan Quine, 1982 (gouache).

 

(6) Monstrosity by Rohan Quine, 1982 (gouache).

 

(5) First Blood by Rohan Quine, 1982 (gouache).

 

(4) The Dead Marshes by Rohan Quine, 1981 (gouache).

 

(3) Shelob’s Lair by Rohan Quine, 1981 (gouache).

 

(2) The Wave by Rohan Quine, 1981 (gouache).

 

Rohan Quine, with his paintings on the walls, 190 Norfolk Street, New York.

 

Cradeaux Alexander and Rohan Quine, with Rohan’s paintings on the walls, 190 Norfolk Street, New York.

 

The paintings appear in some of the New York footage on this website, such as in “Reality 28” (1’27”) where Kim, Wayne and I are silent screens onto which all of the above pictures (except for Monstrosity and The Dead Marshes) are projected, with projections and video-recording by Mal: https://www.rohanquine.com/ny-reality/reality-28-2/

 

The paintings also pop up in the following four brief video clips from an interview of me by a sparky charmer named Meira Moët, for her cable-access TV show Culture Up. She interviewed her guests in their homes, so we sat on my tasteful magenta-zebra-skin-design-covered sofa. In the first one, “Interviews 7” (0’25”), I mention the above picture Fried Eggs by Moonlight, which is hanging on the wall above us: https://www.rohanquine.com/ny-interviews/interviews-7/

 

In the second clip, “Interviews 11” (1’32”), below the same painting, Meira is asking about my winning a Sinéad O’Connor look-alike contest that had spontaneously broken out at a local hostelry (me being a little fan-boy of Sinéad, of course): https://www.rohanquine.com/ny-interviews/interviews-11/

 

In the third clip, “Interviews 9” (1’20”), where she’s asking about modelling, those Fried Eggs are still listening patiently to me: https://www.rohanquine.com/ny-interviews/interviews-9/

 

And in the fourth clip, “Interviews 12” (1’02”), those Fried Eggs continue to demonstrate admirable stamina, while I tell Meira about my writing: https://www.rohanquine.com/ny-interviews/interviews-12/

 

In “Performance 5” (3’00”), the painting Corn in Flames is projected onto me as I perform my text “Enter” from the published collection Hallucinations, with projection and recording by Mal: https://www.rohanquine.com/ny-performance/performance-5/

 

In “Performance 4” (1’35”), Fried Eggs by Moonlight is projected onto me as I perform my text “Pluto” from Hallucinations, with projection and recording by Mal: https://www.rohanquine.com/ny-performance/performance-4/

 

In “Performance 3” (7’45”), projections of Sick Beauty and Conflux appear at the start and end, as brief book-ends around a much longer segment that was shot by Caeser Pink for his Imperial Orgy online show, in which a video piece by Artpig is projected onto me as I perform my text “Action” from Hallucinations: https://www.rohanquine.com/ny-performance/performance-3/ (The full episode of Caeser’s show is here. More about him is here and the Imperial Orgy’s Wikipedia page is here.)

 

And in “Reality 14” (22”), Silence in the Tunnel, Conflux and Sublime are projected onto me, while I indulge in a spontaneous performance comprising equal parts ham and cheese, involving lip-syncs, smoke, light-projections and undoubtedly alcohol or grass all around, shot by whoever was still sober enough to hold the camera. Silly fun times and many golden happy memories of Mal’s and Kim’s apartment, 99 Perry Street #1C, New York NY 10014, in the main sitting-room, at the back of the building on the ground floor: https://www.rohanquine.com/ny-reality/reality-14-2/