A RESTLESS MIND

A new exhibition of artworks by Bob Dylan lifts the veil on an enigmatic poet who seldom explains, says Geordie Greig

- Geordie Greig

The one Bob Dylan show for which you will not need to queue for tickets is an extraordinary display of 97 new paintings opening next weekend in London - as intimate, resonant and reflective as anything the Nobel Prize-winning music star has created.

Almost everything Bob Dylan sings enraptures, and has done for almost seven decades, but what he paints is a revelatory turn of the key into his soul. He has always drawn, even during his childhood in Duluth, Minnesota, where the clank and clang of cargo ships being welded and hammered in the Midwest led to his obsession with iron and steel structures and the romance and nostalgia for an America viewed through that railroad filter.

His new paintings – shown in Bob Dylan: Point Blank at the Halcyon Gallery – share a Kerouac echo of being on the road: exploring, sensing and interpreting a vision of America. We are shown glimpses, triggered memories and vistas.

We see a cowboy with a pistol hanging from his belt; a saxophonist moodily playing; cityscapes, hard and epic and echt-America; even a painting called “Stairway to Heaven” in the form of sweeping wooden steps. He is what Baudelaire saw as the purpose of an artist: to be a flaneur, a walker and a watcher.