If you were around the East Village in the 1980s, you probably spotted the exquisitely dressed artist duo of Peter McGough and David McDermott walking the streets of Alphabet City, looking like they had just been dropped in by a time machine from the Edwardian era.
Those days are long gone and McGough is now ensconced in the West Village, still impeccably dressed and making art almost daily. His creative and romantic partner McDermott has decamped to Ireland, where McGough also lived for a while but came back to New York. McGough says he missed his friends and, “It was boring there in the 90s. Everyone looked like me.”
McGough’s memoir, “I’ve Seen the Future and I’m Not Going,” tells the “fascinating and tumultuous” tale of their ups and downs in a candid, witty and thoroughly engaging way.
It happened that, McGough recounts, “an agent told me that I should write a book,” and he recalls replying, “Yeah, but I’m not a writer.” He was informed that “many a great book has been written in an hour a day,” and he thought, “Okay, I could do an hour a day. I thought that I’d write a book that I’d like to read.”
Five years later, the book was ready for the masses. McDermott hasn’t read it, but many have, and not all of them were happy.
“Some people were upset — actually furious — that they were left out,” McGough says. “And they were the toxic ones.”
Although McGough loves his apartment, he’s not exactly thrilled with what’s become of the neighborhood.
“It was a real town, a nice quiet gay neighborhood,” he muses. “Now it’s a pub crawl. I was fortunate to see the real city. It was like that in Hudson, NY, until the bores took over — the straight couples followed the gays. People who love to wait in lines. Thank you, TikTok, for ruining everything.”
“I like to live in a fantasy,” he continues. “I think of myself as a Bohemian. I’ve got a shoddy 1930s bathroom. But it’s not a white box — this is my temple.”
McGough meditates every morning and goes to his Brooklyn studio Monday through Friday to paint whatever comes to mind.
“I just put up a canvas and go to work,” he says. “I’m completely enthralled by the creative process. I just sit there, and it comes to me.”
McGough follows his internal muse rather than the bottom line.
“I’m not in it for the cash and prizes,” he admits, “although those are nice. I’ve been rich, and I’ve been poor, but I don’t care that I lost everything. People say, ‘You should paint pretty paintings,’ and there are career artists who do the same thing over and over again. But art is not a product.”
McGough’s current show, “Alphabet” — at Karma’s 172 East 2nd St. location — is actually a dip into another favorite medium: photography.
His rendering of the alphabet involved only a day of shooting nude male models forming each of the 26 letters, but a three-year process to get the edition (five of each) printed. This involved a printing process from the 1800s called a cyanotype and McGough was careful to see that each one is perfect.
He’s come a long way from the days when “people terrified me — they just drove me crazy.” He hasn’t had a real job since he sold sandwiches in the Fashion District, and he’s come to appreciate the world in an unexpected way.
“The hippie nature ethic appeals to me,” he muses. “Nothing compares to nature. Anyone can enjoy a sunset.”
One of his more indelible experiences occurred while snorkeling in the Philippines.
“I was just in awe, truly transported into a dream state, when I saw the beauty of the marine life,” McGough recalls. “It was like seeing the face of God in this tiny part of the ocean. This outrageous beauty that I will never see again was beyond pleasure, beyond joy. That’s what nature can do.”
“It’s all just absurd,” he concludes. “We’re all just on a ball in space, and the joke of it is that we’re all going to die. I’ve almost died six times. Why be miserable? It’s great to be alive.”
You can follow Peter McGough on Instagram at @petertmcg. Show info is online at karmakarma.org/exhibitions/peter-mcgough-ny-172-2024.
