Go Figure

Go Figure collects 44 ‘social surrealist’ figurative paintings, spanning 1987-2023. All are in eye-popping colour: many depict a crowd in observational tableaux, each figure a character by virtue of dress, body language, and interactions with each other, animals, and their setting. Other paintings reflect Colwell’s wide travels, and still others are surreal – such as ‘Junior and the Legs’ (2023), which shows a young man strumming a guitar on stage, accompanied by disembodied women’s limbs. Each image has a narrative and a moral purpose – often, one figure bravely moves forward, despite a hostile crowd. In Guy Colwell’s world, no individual could ever be an island, just another part of a rich ecosystem. Thematically, then, it is fitting that this book was made possible by a group of his collectors, who are sponsoring the show/Guy Colwell retrospective ‘Imaginary Reality,’ from which this book is created, in an independent space. Go Figure is in an 11 × 11 inch format, to best feature the high-quality reproductions of these numerous critically praised works.

Author Biography

Guy Colwell is a painter and comics artist best known for his bestselling underground comix series Inner City Romance (collected into a volume published by Fantagraphics in 2015). He worked extensively as an illustrator, cartoonist and color artist for underground newspapers and publishers from the 1970s into the 1990s, between sabbaticals for environmental research travel and social action. His other books include Street Scenes (2015), In Fox’s Forest (2016), and Doll (2019). He lives in Berkeley, CA.