Bob Dylan has given his endorsement to American presidential candidate Barrack Obama.
Speaking from London, Dylan told Times journalist Alan Jackson "America is in a state of upheaval. Poverty is demoralizing. You can't expect people to have the virtue of purity when they are poor. But we've got this guy out there now who is redefining the nature of politics from the ground up...Barack Obama. He's redefining what a politician is, so we'll have to see how things play out. Am I hopeful? Yes, I'm hopeful that things might change. Some things are going to have to."The still philosophical Dylan told Jackson, "You should always take the best from the past, leave the worst back there and go forward into the future."
The occasion for Dylan speaking wasn't to tell the world who to vote for. He was actually doing the interview to talk about his exhibition of paintings that is about to open in London.
Dylan created his watercolour paintings between 1989 and 1992. The Drawn Blank Series features 300 canvases ranging from portraits to nudes.
About the painting he said, "I try to live as simply as is possible and was just drawing whatever I felt like drawing, whenever I felt like doing it. The idea was always to do it without affectation or self-reference, to provide some kind of panoramic view of the world as I was seeing it."
The exhibition opens on June 14 at the Halcyon Gallery in Bruton Street.
