New t-shirt design for Vicenza, Italy’s Discomfort. They needed something dark and crusty to fit with their music style and I went with a scratchy ink style for their job. I wanted to slightly change some of the elements in the design to be different than the usual bullets-n-skulls crust style, since Discomfort meld a variety of sounds into their music and I am influenced by many different things too. So, a vulture, and head mark and some loose coins at the bottom might make the piece more unique.

You can now follow Gostworks on Instagram. Most of the same work I post there is the same as here at the main site, albeit squarely cropped and far less verbose. The format does allow for WIP photos and random sketches much more fluidly so I will occasionally post those as well. I do appreciate the feedback and like the ease of connecting with people and other artists on there.

Tongues 3, the latest in my series (and first new painting of 2013) about extinct peoples and lost languages. Previous pieces can be seen here and here.

Ambient + Human – Two Painted Series by Brian D’Agosta opens on Friday, September 21, 8 p.m. at TRVE Brewing, 227 Broadway, #101, Denver. I am so excited for this opportunity to show my work as painted and presented in a unique and beautiful space that honors both our creativity.

This painting depicts a scene outside the Church of the Holy Spirit in Palermo, Sicily. The style I chose to work with is similar to an older piece I did, using Italian history as a reference point. From there, the interpretation of events isn’t as clear and my narrative devices take over. The scene shows a common Sicilian man tired and on his knees after a struggle with a French-Sicilian noble. The nuns in the background, as well as the church, are meant to reinforce not only their location, but to draw a distinction that even those in the employ of the State were disgusted by the reign of Charles, a foreign tyrant.

Other production notes include a conscious decision to have the majority of the piece created with a grey monochrome and to have a shock of yellow color for the lettering. I also used the yellow to give the piece some vibrancy and cast aside what would’ve been an easier decision to use black, red, or white. The title of this painting and the typeset on it pulls directly from Giuseppe Verdi’s opera, i Vespri Siciliani :

E sorse il giorno alfin
che di novelli oltraggi
lo colmi il, fier nemico,
ond’ei si desti e s’armi la sua mano!

And the day has come at last
when our fierce enemy perpetrates
such brutality that the people
are forced to rise and take up arms!

Tongues 2, part of an ongoing series about an extinct tribe shown through the loss of their language. In this piece, words and writing are literally pouring from the figure’s face and hands.

I have a painting in the Mindpool 2012 show at NEXT Gallery here in Denver from now until June 1, 2012. It’s a juried show and is among many other really brilliant artists’ works.