Paul Guilmoth is an American artist
Episode 308: Paul Guilmoth is an American artist whose new book At Night Gardens Grow is an elegy to Trula Drinkard-Goolsby and was published recently by Stanley/Barker.
Guilmoth continues to weave an esoteric and magical world complicated by odes to the night and nature’s more sinister aspects. Their work is evocative of a tradition of photographic-image making that could more likely be described as arcane, from the playful cruciform of self-portraits by F. Holland Day to the more lyrical work of Minor White and Edmund Teske. Guilmoth follows the mysterious tradition of a type of pagan formalism where the uncanny rules both over the heavens and the night itself.
I first came into contact with Paul from their work with Dylan Hausthor, whose book Sleep Creek was published by VOID in 2019. Paul’s work in contemporary mode is also reminiscent of Tereza Zelenkova and Elena Hellfrecht, two artists who also focus on psychoanalytic forms and esoterism drawn from everything from the subconscious to Aleister Crowley. I mention these artists as there is a slight pulse of this work forming. Where Paul departs is his deep fascination with nature and his ability to turn what is natural into something, once observed, unnatural, or persistently unnerving. However, I suspect they might argue that this is not their intention. Please tune in to hear Paul explain the work!!!!!!
