Don ZaleDon Zale
Biography
The Cult of the Body
by Tony Esposito
When asked about his debuts,
Don Zale is happy to tell the details of that first big piece he did at fifteen.
Started with three other students, the 30' x 20' pop art mural was left into Don's
hands after six months. He will take the next year to finish it alone.
That is how twenty years of paintings, drawings, ceramics, sculptings and others,
started. First one-man show titled Epilogue
to the Millenum in 1995
at Slack Alice Gallery in Toronto, then in 1996 at Dorothy's Gallery in Vancouver,
talked about "the rape" of the Arctic by petrochemical corporations, about
polar bears, about ice, snow and mountains.
The same year, Don Zale presented another exhibit in Vancouver, Icebergs and Angels, where the icy theme met the beauty of golden angels. The unnatural
erotic beauty appears now like a first sign of the work to follow: hundreds of drawings
of male bodies.
The body is important in the process of Don's work. Of course, as a subject: the
drawings are done from live models. The photo modeling experience of Don is also
an important part of his work and his art. By being on "the other side",
as the subject, another dimension shows up when he is back as the creator with his
grease pencils or with the acrylic paint on his brushes.
The body can also be the canvas Don uses. The different prizes, specially at the
Gay Naturists International summer gatherings in Pennsylvania, as a body painter,
are marks of the creativity and ingenuity diplayed by the artist.
But that wasn't enough. The unfulfilled need to get closer, more involved with his
art was leaving him unsatisfied. And the revelation happened. The words of Andy Warhol
came to him: "Be in touch with the canvas". To get over the distance that
the brushes create, he used his own body, and more precisely his penis, to feel the
paint and the canvas, to be in direct physical contact with his art.
Surprisingly, even though nudity and erotica are very present in his portfolio, the
paintings done with his penis are fields of puppies, snow storm and flowers.
