David Lynch is best known as an Emmy, Academy Award, and Golden Globe nominated Writer/Director/Producer.  He is the creator of such films as The Elephant Man, Dune, Eraserhead, Blue Velvet , Wild At Heart, and Mulholland Dr., as well as of the television series Twin Peaks.  With such a prolific and influential career in film making, it’s easy to understand why any of his outside ventures may be over shadowed.  Last year Lynch made one such venture with Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse, in which the director provided vocal contributions to the Dark Night of the Soul album, as well as accompanying photographs for the project.  A subsequent gallery show of the photographs took place at Los Angeles‘ Michael Kohn gallery from May 30 – July 29 of 2009.

With the hype surrounding EMI‘s refusal to release the music for DNOTS, we posted an extensive two-piece article about the project.  Unfortunately however, we entirely overlooked the fact that Lynch had a completely unrelated gallery show  later in the year.  “David Lynch : New Paintings“, was held from at the William Griffin gallery in Santa Monica from Sept. 12th – Dec. 12th, 2009.  Although Lynch was actually a painter, prior to ever beginning his film career, this collection represents the first of Lynch‘s original paintings to be displayed in the United States in more than a decade.

Due to our past coverage of Lynch‘s art, we were contacted and offered the opportunity to premiere the following footage by DFL.TV (The David Lynch Foundation).  The video not only contains exclusive coverage of the gallery opening, but celebrity interviews as well.  Among those interviewed are actress, Laura Dern, award-winning film-maker, Roger Corman, and even Lynch himself.

According to DFL.TV, the 6 core pieces in the exhibit weigh “around 300 pounds each” and “are each displayed in a shadow box that was inspired by the artist Francis Bacon, a key influence on Lynch’s artistic life.”

When asked about this by Brian Rich, producer/director of the above video, Lynch elaborated by saying the following:

“I went to the Marlborough gallery in New York City in the 60’s. I don’t know if it was ’67 or ’66 … I think it was 67, I don’t know, Marlborough gallery…I walked in, I almost passed out. The work was so incredible…and it was framed in a similar way to this. Glass floating in front of the paint… gold leaf frames… And it just, the whole presentation just shot me through the roof and I said, if I ever get any money…I wanna frame my stuff like that. They were destined for this kind of frame. And the thing is, they’ll live in this frame now. Whatever happens to ‘em, they’ll live in this frame. It’s like their house.“

When questioned about future plans for the pieces, Lynch laughed and answered by saying:

“Um…they’re close to 300 lbs each…the paintings…and I need a crane to get’em in my house… you gotta help me sell these things.“

The song playing throughout the video is called “Revenge“.  It is a track from the Dark Night of the Soul album and features Dangermouse and Sparklehorse in collaboration with The Flaming Lips.  For access to MP3s of the entire album, please visit our past coverage of the project by clicking HERE.

To view images of the DNOTS photographs from the previous gallery show, you can link to our coverage of that through HERE.

To inquire about purchasing any of the pieces from the exhibit and/or find out more about The David Lynch Foundation, please check out DFL.TV.  We highly encourage you to do so; it’s a fascinating non-profit and their site provides endless content and information.