Gerald Nason, like all true artists, is inexplicably driven by a passion for a subject that possesses a part of his mind. For him the Minotaur is a much maligned and misunderstood character.
The story of the Minotaur centers on the white bull, imprisoned in the labyrinth at Crete, which was created from the sea by Poseidon. Being neither fully human, animal, or god, the ambiguity of the figure of the Minotaur placed it outside the conventional bounds of norms of morals and reason. It had no choice but to survive on eating humans given in sacrifice.
The monstrous double became important to the European surrealist movement because its mythology expressed both the violence of the rites of war and sacrifice, and a cultural plurality, being part bull, part man. In this context it was a foundational text for the surrealists, and was a metaphor for and observation on, the inevitable destructiveness of the forces governing Western society.
Albert Skeer's review, Minotaure, which appeared from 1933 to 1939, was not only an extraordinary demonstration of the surrealist imagination, but, it canonised the mythic figure of the minotaur as the principal theme of its covers. Here, artists Derain, Bores, Duchamp, Ernst, Miro, Dali, Matisse, Magritte, Masson, and Rivera all made their contribution on the theme on the Minotaur.
Gerald Nason trained formally in Art and was acquainted in his student days with a young David Hockney and others of renown. So he is from a grand stable of artistic merit. He has eschewed the chase of a public name, but for decades has ensconced himself deep in the beautiful Suffolk countryside, totally free of city commotion, a place with night whisperings of mystical undercurrents, conducive to the invention and imaginings of folkloric myth. It is as though the Suffolk Minotaurs have always existed and are a part of the local community. They are a community in themselves, not only in the mind of Gerald Nason, but are also most certainly in the world, lovingly framed on the walls of people in Gerald Nason's village, who love them and are proud of them. He creates recognisable characters, strongly reminiscent of people we know, and although beast, not so far removed so as to see in them the fool and the tragic in us all, from which we are all constantly engaged in trying to escape.
