from Reuters
Image: Reuters

The Halcyon Gallery in central London has put on display dozens of works by the 67-year-old musician, mainly vibrant versions in water colour and gouache of a series of drawings he created between 1989 and 1992 while on tour and in studios.

The works were published in 1994 in a book called "Drawn Blank", and years later Dylan revisited the series after a curator at an art gallery in Chemnitz, Germany, approached him.

The original drawings were digitally scanned and in some cases enlarged before Dylan re-worked them using different colour schemes.

The result is "The Drawn Blank Series", a collection of everyday scenes including train tracks, portraits, sunflowers, wrecked cars, trucks, still lifes and semi-erotic images of a bare-breasted woman or sisters in various stages of undress.

Dylan has consistently resisted interpreting his work, be it music or art.

Speaking in the 1990s, Dylan explained: "The purpose of my drawings is very undefined. They're very personal drawings."

And in an interview with the Times newspaper to publicize the London show, he said any similarities with other, better known artists was "just by accident and instinctive".

Dylan also took a swipe at the music industry.

"The music world's a made-up bunch of hypocritical rubbish," he told the Times.

"And the art world? ... Basically, they are who they say they are. They don't pretend. And having been in the music world most of my life, I can tell you it's not that way. Let's just say it's less ... dignified."

Paul Green, president of Halcyon Gallery, said he believed Dylan had captured "life in its everyday grittiness, it is what it is.

"Take the 'Train Tracks' series, you look at that image and it is what we all do every day of our lives."

He likened Dylan's series, with their radically different colour schemes, to Impressionist greats like Claude Monet, who also painted variations on the same theme.

"He (Dylan) is one of the great figures of the 20th century and this is an explosion of artistic creativity. All artists go through it."

According to Green, a collector plans to buy a large number of Dylan's originals in order to exhibit them around the world. He would not name the individual.

"The Drawn Blank Series" runs from June 14 until July 13.