Michael Deyermond: the bed the book the woman the drug
December 7, 2024 - January 25, 2025
Opening Reception: December 7, 4-6pm
Michael Deyermond has spent the past thirty years interrogating how to paint a poem, how to tell a story, and how to be an artist in America. He has utilized everything he can lay his hands on to transcribe his heart-ravaging narratives: text and imagery, painting and sculpture, installation and mural. Deyermond’s latest collection of fifty hand-painted books, the bed the book the woman the drug, explores the savage paradoxes of the heart. The title outlines both his saviors and his vices, while other pieces explore the intimate relationship between artmaking and spirituality. Deyermond’s signature lyricism and irreverent lettering add new valances to works by Beatnik Wallace Berman and painter-poet William Blake, creating a choral effect—a simultaneously personal and universal library.
Poet, former bookstore owner and part-time vagabond based in California, Deyermond makes paintings, drawings, and rough-hewn wooden sculptures inscribed with bare bones aphorisms that expose a brittle, yet persevering soul. His work addresses the California promise, the wicked realities of unfulfilled dreams, and bitter truths of longing and commitment in relationships.