Broken Balloons

A selection of artworks and writings that spring from a lifetime of looking at reality sideways. Welcome to Gail’s world. Linger as long as you like ? it can be quite contagious. Gail Prussky spent most of her life trying to stifle the images in her head. She studied art history in university, got married, made meatloaf, raised a daughter, took care of her elderly parents, worked for a decade as a crack/cocaine addiction therapist ? and never talked about the creatures that spent their days inside her mind, eating each others’ heads and dancing in the moonlight. She was the picture of normal. Eventually the pressure built up. It was time to evict the inmates. And the drawing and painting began. And once unleashed, it's been impossible to stop. Influenced by artists like Edward Gorey, Gary Larson, Ralph Steadman, Robert Crumb, etc., Gail has been delighted to discover that her inner world makes people smile. From the Foreword by David Cronenberg: *The Gail Prussky Interview.* ?I finally met Gail at the Wm Burroughs Black Meat Juice Bar. I wanted to interview her about her new book of drawings and paintings, and her handler had told me the Burroughs was her favourite watering-hole in Toronto. When she came in, I waved her over to the cricket-hide stool I’d saved for her? ?The way I see it, you paint and draw like a science-fiction insect. Like a creature not human?If reality is neurology - my formulation, my understanding ? then your reality is nonhuman neurology, or rather, you’ve managed to become an invented creature and have created art from that invented neurology. And thus created a new reality?’”

is a Canadian filmmaker, screenwriter, actor and author. He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror or venereal horror genre. This style of filmmaking explores people's fears of bodily transformation and infection. In his films, the psychological is typically intertwined with the physical. His films have won numerous international awards, and his first novel has been an international success. After fifty-plus years of leading an ?average, unassuming life,” the final decade as a hard-drug addiction therapist, Gail Prussky moved from the city to the country and suddenly it occurred to her that there was but a brief moment to stop the revolving door between sanity and senility, and if she didn’t act fast, she’d find herself on the wrong side. And that is when she began to draw and paint, the floodgates wide open. Her catharsis to a long life of keeping everything inside. ?I’d be shooting at innocent people from a bell tower somewhere?” she is fond of quipping. ?If I wasn’t an artist, I’d be a serial killer.”