My painting THE VISITOR as illustration for the story "The Monster in the Bed"

Originally published on my Steemit Blog

I had forgotten about this: some time ago I gave permission to use my painting

"The Visitor"

as a illustration for a short story in the
INDIAN QUARTERLY
Theme: SECRETS

   THE VISITOR - 28 x 24 inches - acrylic on masonite panel - 1994

I blogged about this painting previously - you find some detail shots in that blog:
🎨 THE VISITOR

"The Monster in the Bed"

BY SHREEVATSA NEVATIA in The Indian Quarterly - a Literary and Cultural Magazine 
Childhood can be a time of cosy confidences—or experiences so devastatingly adult a child can never share them. Shreevatsa Nevatia on the trauma of childish secrets

I was 13 when I discovered Chatropolis. Since internet connectivity was unreliable then, I began paying more attention to my dial-up modem. My anxiety would rise with the tempo of its beeps and whistles. But I couldn’t leave my room locked for long. The laundry would invariably need taking out, or my sister would again be curious about my whereabouts. I’d have an hour if I was lucky. The trouble with Chatropolis, however, was that it needed time. Its adult chat rooms were all categorised on the basis of fetishes or sexual preference. To get something going, you had to loiter, and I was always in a hurry.

Pretending to be a dapper doctor in ‘The Hospital’, I forgot my teenage plumpness. In the rooms of Chatropolis, no one asked about your everyday life. You were the pornographic cliché you wanted to be. For the first month, the conversations I had didn’t really go anywhere. I felt out of place in the ‘Nudist Colony’, and I could never muster the authority that other men seemed to have in ‘Office Seduction’. The sex ratio, I saw, was also skewed. For every five men, there was one woman here. Years later, I would tell myself that my decision to pick a female avatar was first influenced by statistics.

Source: The Indian Quarterly Volume 7 ~ Issue 1 ~ October-December 2018

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Jos Pirkner's monumental work

On Friday, October 19th while visiting Anni Fuchs at the Ernst Fuchs Museum I met the most fascinating artist, Jos Pirkner, whom Anni introduced me to. His monumental work just left me speechless! 

JOS PIRKNER

Jos Pirkner was born on 2 December 1927 in Sillian, East Tyrol. He attended the School of Applied Arts in Klagenfurt, graduated from the Master School of Applied Arts in Graz. He discovered his love for metalwork as a private student of Rudolf Reinhart in Salzburg.

Website:

 JOS PIRKNER

Articles in German:
Der Letzte Bulle 

Red Bull-Zentrale mit Jos Pirkners Skulptur eröffnet

Fulminante Plastiken sind das Markenzeichen von Jos Pirkner. In jahrelanger Arbeit hat er die Red Bull-Zentrale mit Europas größter Bronzeskulptur geplant und geschaffen.

Excerpt from his Biography, translated from German:

The young artist followed an offer from the Brom brothers in 1951 and began working as an independent gold and silver sculptor for this world-famous studio in the Netherlands. Jos Pirkner was accepted by the Academy of Fine Arts in Amsterdam and attended as a guest auditor the Free Academy in Utrecht. This city was his second home for the next 25 years. Pirkner opened his own studio and married in 1966 Joke Baegen. Immediately after the birth of his son Gidi, he returned to East Tyrol in 1978. Prof. Jos Pirkner lives with his family in Tristach near Lienz. The work of Jos Pirkner unites imagination and energy. And another, rare quality of a sculptor: the sense of human sensitivity. In the midst of the destruction and poverty of the post-war years, my parents have financed me with an artistic education. Where bread is scarce, art has no value. Nevertheless, my parents advised me to go my own way, as did the Dutch painter Charles Eyk years later, whom I met in Amsterdam. These people have not shaped my work, but my personality as an artist. I owe to them the self-confidence, undeterred by commercial and intellectual fashions, simply to make my art.

I feel privileged to have met this great artist!

Order of the Pope for Jos Pirkner

More information found here (German):
XXL KUNSTMAGAZIN - JOS PIRKNER