The Desolation Row Canvas Artwork… (S.Balkowitsch)

Bob Dylan's epic song recorded on August 4th, 1965 has been brought to life into the form of a fine art painting. Every detail has been thoughtfully constructed from the original song lyrics. Not a character or mentioned element has been left out of this one-of- a-kind piece.

I set the painting in Duluth, Minnesota where Bob was born and where the infamous hangings took place on the corner of 1st Street and 2nd Avenue as seen in the painting. Notice Bob and his Lady "look out tonight from Desolation Row". He still has the letter "I received your letter yesterday" and the doorknob "about the time the doorknob broke" in his hand from the final verse of the song. Many other elements of Bob Dylan's career have also been represented throughout the art piece. From his crashed Triumph motorcycle to his obvious Heaven's Door depiction. Mr. Tambourine Man and the Diplomat with his Siamese cat on his back make an appearance, just to name a few.

A historical piece of art for any Bob Dylan and Desolation Row fan.




The Bob Dylan song has also recently been redone by My Chemical Romance and has received much praise for a modern take of an old classic. There is also a wonderful rendition of the song by artist Chris Smither done a few years back.
My name is Shane Balkowitsch and I have collaborated with artist Theo Cobb to bring to life my vision of the historical song. After doing and exhaustive search we believe this has never been depicted before. The process started over 2 years ago and is finally complete. The Original piece of Art is 48" by 26" in size and is an oil painting on canvas. Hundreds of hours of research, sketching and rendering have been put into this piece and any Bob Dylan fan who knows the song will surely appreciate the scope of this piece.




Now available to any Bob Dylan fan on a stretched museum quality canvas full color print available in the above two sizes. If you order the 48" by 24" version it is the exact size as the original work of art.
Your print is printed using the finest museum printing technology available onto museum quality canvas material and coated with a UV coated acrylic finish to protect the image from dust, moisture and fading. The print is "Museum Wrapped" which provides a clean look from front, side, and back with the full image showing and white sides exposed all around. The canvas is wrapped around a thick 1" wooden support bars to create a finished look that allows you to hang without a frame. The image is stapled to the back of the stretcher bars beautiful texture of canvas enhances the artwork and makes the work perfectly suitable to hang directly onto the wall without mat, frame or glass. We also have a Giclee Print on matte paper version for anyone who wants to frame the artwork themselves.
Sincerely, Shane Balkowitsch

Additional Key Features Incorporated into Artwork:





- Heaven's Door hovering in air from song "Knocking on Heaven's Door"
- Rolling Stone rolling across scene from song "Like a Rolling Stone"
- Guns and Badge on the Ground from song "Knocking on Heaven's Door"
- Tambourine Man in the crowd from the song "Mr. Tambourine Man"
- Diplomat with his Siamese Cat "with your diplomat, who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat" from song "Like a Rolling Stone"
- Nude woman on "Big Brass Bed" from song Lay Lady Lay
- Jakob Dylan in window near his Wallflowers graffiti
- Bob's wrecked Triumph motorcycle from his accident
- Diamond Pawn Shop "But you'd better take your diamond ring, you'd better pawn it babe" from song "Like a Rolling Stone"
- Storm Shelter on Sign from song "Shelter from the Storm"
- Suze Rotolo is depicted as Bob's Lady, near in in the window "looking out tonight over Desolation Row"




PS: YourLustForLifeStartsRightNow!

BROOK OF BOB

This Dylan song is knocking me out as most DYLAN SONGS tend to do. This is Tombstone Blues...says

"Mama's in the fact'ry
She ain't got no shoes,
Daddy's in the alley
He's lookin' for the fuse,
I'm in the streets
With the tombstone blues"....

"Something is happening but you don't know what it is...Do you Mr Jones" follows where Tombstone left off. Its almost like one continuous reverberation...like a refreshing river that was once a little brook of a fresh-water stream like the ones you see in the northern wilderness of Bhutan...that eventually grows as it journeys downhill.

The li'l brook then begins to open up after the struggle through forest thickets and hard brushes- metamorphosing into a handsome young river that's got some attitude as it crashes and flows through more broadened landscapes...where country folks use the river's riches to nurture and grow their fields.

The rivers are now beginning to take epic proportions...they provide you with rice and wheat and vegetables and whatever the good mother earth giveth.

When you leave the mountains and the hills and venture south toward more tropical climes you see the rivers still...there's a strange familiarity at first...you didn't know and you're not quite sure this is the li'l brook that gargled and tumbled its way forth down to meet up with all its kind.

You can't comprehend the physical changes the rivers have gone through> its a confident looking smart river that's no more shy and timid about what and who it is. It just flows on, oblivious to the boats and the fishermen.

The banks are now filled with stones and boulders that are like laundry machines for the paddy-field folks.

The river is in its prime.
The river was always in its prime irrespective of where and how big or small it used to be. You see; wherever you saw this river it was perfectly molded to the needs of that locale.

Now it houses all kinds of aquatic life. It joins up with its brethren and together they journey on....until they get to the shores at the mouth of the Bay of Bengal.

This is where they help house and quench the thirst of beauties like the Royal Bengal Tiger and the Indian Elephant. The feathered kind also prosper from the rich embankments. The people who live here draw life from the river's many gifts.

And to think this all began as little flakes of snow capping the mountains and becoming solid glaciers; melted as timely as they could to form the first droplets of water dripping down to where the water finds its level and begins to flow.

Taking the path of least resistance, the little droplets know naturally how to go with the flow.

Water, they say, always finds its level.

And Bob Dylan songs, you see, are just like the elements. From snow-flake-glacier-water-droplets-to-brook-stream-river-ocean and back to the Origins.

"Now goodbye is too good a word babe; so i'll just say fare thee well" as i listen some more to Dylan magic even as this alter-ego Jack Frost Fate in Masked & Anonymous with that track "How Does It Feel" lingoing in Mexican!

Guess that line by Depp in "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" is apt: "You're either a Mexi-Can or a Mexi-Can't!

PS: YourLustForLifeStartsRightNow!

Theme Time With Bob Dylan: His TabSheRap...

“Play it fuckin' loud!”



“I accept chaos, I'm not sure whether it accepts me.”

“I'll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours”
Lyrics: 1962-2001

“Behind every beautiful thing, there's some kind of pain.”

“The future for me is already a thing of the past -
You were my first love and you will be my last”
Love And Theft

“And I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinking.”

“Don't criticize what you can't understand.”

“A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.”

“All I can be is me- whoever that is. ”


“Life is more or less a lie, but then again, that's exactly the way we want it to be.”

“I think women rule the world and that no man has ever done anything that a woman either hasn't allowed him to do or encouraged him to do.”

“People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.”

“Sometimes it's not enough to know what things mean, sometimes you have to know what things don't mean.”

“May your heart always be joyful. May your song always be sung.”

“Gonna change my way of thinking, make my self a different set of rules. Gonna put my good foot forward and stop being influenced by fools.”

“You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

“He not busy being born is busy dying.”


“If you want to keep your memories, you first have to live them.”

“Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind,

Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves,
The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach,
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow. Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free,
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands, With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves,
Let me forget about today until tomorrow.”

“May God bless and keep you always,
May your wishes all come true,
May you always do for others
And let others do for you.
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung,
May you stay forever young,”


“Gotta head full of ideas that are driving me insane...”

“When you feel in your gut what you are and then dynamically pursue it - don't back down and don't give up - then you're going to mystify a lot of folks.”

“No one is free, even the birds are chained to the sky.”

“When you've got nothing, you've got nothing to loose.”

“If you try to be anyone but yourself, you will fail; if you are not true to your own heart, you will fail. Then again, there's no success like failure” “Mona Lisa must have had the highway blues; you can tell by the way she smiles.”
“Every pleasure's got an edge of pain, pay your ticket and don't complain” “To live outside the law you must be honest.”
“It frightens me, the awful truth, of how sweet life can be...”

“How does it feel, how does it feel to be without a home, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone.”

“I'm against nature. I don't dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay.”

“Chaos is a friend of mine.” “I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul...” PS: YourLustForLifeStartsRightNow!
“The truth was obscure,
Too profound and too pure,
To live it you had to explode”
“How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.” “You can never be wise and be in love at the same time.”

“It's like my whole life never happened,
When I see you, it's as if I never had a thought.
I know this dream, it might be crazy,
But it's the only one I've got.”

“I was so much older then; I'm younger than that now.
From the back pages”

“There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke. But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate, so let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late. ”
“Even if you don't have all the things you want, be grateful for the things you don't have that you don't want (Bob Dylan's dad)”
Chronicles, Vol. 1

“People disagreeing everywhere you look makes you wanna stop and read a book. ”
“If ever asked to look at yourself, don't.”
“Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.”
“It's a wicked life, but what the hell, the stars ain't falling down.”
Lyrics: 1962-2001“When you asked me how I was doing, was that some kind of joke?”