car art

After downloading Stephen King’s Mile 81 novella onto my iPhone last night (I like to wait until the wife is asleep and read under the duvet), I couldn’t help but notice the eye-catching cover art. Intrigued, I tapped the artist’s name into my phone’s Notes feature and, oblivious of the amazing world that awaited me, I went to sleep.

The name I recalled from my phone the following day was Troy Paiva, and one search into Google images filled my screen, eyes, mind and soul with a barrage of stark and contrasting colours that accurately (and rather eerily) represented everything I feel about the automobile and the personalities they possess. As you may know, nothing excites Gargling Gas more than cars with attitude, machines possessing a sense there is something more than electrics and mechanics going on behind their headlights.

With a vision expressed through lighting and a penchant for exploring the abandoned and unknown at night, Troy Paiva manages to inject colour, life and drama into the ostensibly listless and dead.

Troy Paiva has been stalking the night for images since 1989. Whether it’s abandoned buildings or junkyards, or simply exploring places he considers the ruins of a “Lost America”, Paiva finds inspiration through his sense of isolation and loneliness.

Thinking of himself as more an “Urban Explorer” than an artist and photographer, Paiva has also penned books about his night-time experiments with loneliness and light. “I love the surreal feeling of wandering through an abandoned subdivision, alone, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night. Your senses become heightened and you feel the weight of time.”

Personally I am extremely excited because, not only do I adore and need all of these photographs hanging in my home, but Paiva “gets” it, he understands how static objects (especially machines) set within bleak backgrounds can evoke feelings and tease the senses if viewed a certain way.

Take the guy above, for example – whilst some (my wife and mother-in-law included) may see it as a horror B-movie prop, Gargling Gas and the majority of our readers (I hope) see her as an orphan that first needs taming, naming and then given a home, a place where she’ll be cared for, restored, loved and cherished.

But then that could just be me…

If you want to see more of these stunning shots, check out Paiva’s galleries.

And remember folks, Gargling Gas exists because cars have feelings too…

Yesterday I sadly learned the passing of the incredible and incomparable surrealist painter, sculptor and set designer, H.R. Giger. If you’ve seen the Alien movies you’ll have witnessed the mind of this Swiss genius. I’m not usually a Sci-Fi fan, but the horrors Giger introduced into the Alien movies pushed them heavily into the horror sub-genre – I’m a big fan of violence, blood and gore.

I was lucky enough to watch the first film at a friend’s house, aged 11. If I’m to be totally honest, I did scare me a little as the film set and Aliens were so startlingly real – this movie makes the CGI of today look silly and amateur.

A few years later at secondary school I was friends with a kid whose father earned a good living supplying the U.S. with his massive modern art canvases during the late 80s. This friend had a few H.R. Giger books in his room, and thumbing through them because of my love of horror, I realised this chap had a lot more going on in his head (pic above). Obviously, been a teenage male, this horror erotica stuck with me.

I was very sad to hear the great man had passed and it reminded me of the inspired car art pictured below. Further investigation led me to a whole load of Giger inspired automotive art, so seeing as this is a car site and I’m a big Giger fan, it’s totally fitting that I say R.I.P. and present some of the art inspired by the man now casting light somewhere dark, dank and brimmed with horror.