Jonathan Jones on Arcimboldo (1527-1593):
’There is a formidable power in these seasons and elements. They are more than their parts; they are not mere optical tricks, but characters or personae. They are a bit frightening, for there is at their core a life force that verges on the demonic.
Arcimboldo’s nature is superabundant. Even in abeyance, it is rich and full: in deepest midwinter, it is busy. His Winter is a twisted, gnarled tree stump, and yet, far from being denuded of leaves and life, it is encrusted with parasitic growth: ivy proliferates in the woody roots of its hair, its white lips are tree fungi, two lemons hang on a sprig. Veins bulge from its bark. In Spring, this old man is replaced by a young face pink and green with lewd vitality. The uninhibited brightness of the young world is almost painful - and this becomes still more unsettling in the face of Summer, whose ripe fruits form a mad, wild grin. Summer’s laughing cherry eyes are heartless, unthinking, sublimely potent. The softer profile of Autumn seems wiser, savouring grapes and grains.
The year is a living creature that metamorphoses from one form to another through its abundant cycle. Each of these seasonal beings is alive and, more than that, conscious. These are nature gods, and they come from a place far more primitive than the classical sources studied by Renaissance humanists. Their supernatural charge has more to do with the harvest ballads and carnival masks of the peasants whose rites the emperor might observe on hunting trips than with his court librarian’s ransackings of the Latin authors.
....
The eye of Water is that of a sunfish: vast, round, glittering and dark. The eye of Winter is a knotty hole that leads deep into the tree’s depths. Petals make Spring’s eye. All these are windows on some sentient consciousness. This is why the paintings fascinate us - not because they are ingenious, but because they are uncanny. At the heart of their power is the conviction that unnamed beings look back out of the trees and fields, that the world watches, with a smile or grimace.’
I have definitely felt this before (shudders)
(scroll down below the Clean one) which has a recent interview with David and features music from his last three solo albums. There's also a Bob Scott podcast too with his songs and an interview. You can stream them from that page above or download them to an ipod on the iTunes podcast link.