Printed on the occasion of the Paul Housley’s exhibition The Poets Elbow (2020) at Belmacz.

Housley recently became the proprietor of The Poets Elbow, a fictitious pub where the artist feels at home. Within this familiar setting, we are introduced to the regulars who cross the threshold. Coupling the fruits of a fierce imagination with adaptations from the canon of art history, Housley invites us to reflect on our interior worlds with vivid portrayals of various human conditions in correlation with the states of intimacy, violence and contemplation. Repeated reinterpretations of particular motifs continue to haunt his work and inhabit our subconscious.