Clive Barker

Primordial Images of a Modern Mystic Clive Barker

The catalog represents the first solo exhibition by self-taught Southern California-based artist Myron Conan Dyal. Primordial Images of a Modern Mystic features paintings, drawings, and sculptures from Dyal's vast oeuvre spanning nearly three decades. His imagery is overwhelmingly dark and haunting and obviously created with obsession and compulsion: he uses papier-mache to create his sculpture, in large part, because its immediacy accommodates his urgency to see his objects in three-dimensional form. His usually figurative or organic forms are derived from visions he experienced during epileptic seizures and self-induced trances he encountered on his spiritual journey to come to grips with his lifelong struggle with the epilepsy and its stigma. A classically trained musician and telecommunications executive, Dyal kept his prolific production of art secret for many years -- only showing it to family and a few close friends until recently.