current work

I am currently working on a painting as a commissioned piece. My good friends Martin

and Claire who have moved to Wales have been converting an old Chapel house, upon a recent visit it is almost complete and a mighty fine job Martin has made. They had spoken about purchasing a painting from me but this fell by the wayside and instead set a challenge for myself, Jo, Hugh and Su to produce a painting each; we were dually given a blank canvas and told to paint whatever we wanted!!!

Here is the second stage at present, deciding on the rest of the colour schemes - mixing lots of colours tee hee:)

Worth waiting for (if you know the ad)

Still one of my favourites especially as this is my tipple

then there is this, simple but brilliant I've always wanted to know what to do with my hands whilst a pint is being poured!!

Oh yes, on a roll

I reckon we've all hummed this!

couldn't resist this........

Horsing around

following recent posts some more horse stuff........ but a little more personal!
A good friend, Ben AKA ASBO who now resides in Australia has informed me via further person in the know (the grudge) won approx 4,000 oz dollars on a horse some years ago
The name of the horse was Octagonal
wiki link:
Octagonal (foaled 1992 in New Zealand) is a retired champion Thoroughbred racehorse, affectionately called the big O or 'Occy'. He was sired by Zabeel, out of the broodmare Eight Carat, a descendant of Man o' War who was ranked No. 1 on the Blood-Horse magazine List of the Top 100 U.S. Racehorses of the 20th Century.
Trained by John Hawkes, in 1995 Octagonal was crowned the Australian Champion Two Year Old. The two-year-old Octagonal won the AJC Sires Produce Stakes and earned a second placing in the STC Golden Slipper, and AJC Champagne Stakes.
In his three-year-old season Octagonal won seven times. But what was even more remarkable was the standard of his 3-year-old contemporaries. Saintly had already won the Australian Cup. (In the next season Saintly would win both the W S Cox Plate and the Melbourne Cup). Nothin' Leica Dane had already been runner-up in the Melbourne Cup. While Filante would go on to win the Epsom Handicap in record time.
Octagonal's seven three-year-old victories started with the weight-for-age championship of Australia, the W S Cox Plate at Moonee Valley in his most dominant season. He went on to take out the 3yo Triple Crown consisting of the Canterbury Guineas, Rosehill Guineas and the Australian Derby in record time, and he is still the last horse to have done so. Add to this a victory in the WFA Mercedes Classic marking his fourth Group 1 race win in five weeks. Already the earner of close to $A4 million, Octagonal was voted the 1996 Australian Champion Three Year Old as well as the Australian Horse of the Year title.
Octagonal continued to perform well in 1997 when as a four-year-old he collected his second Mercedes Classic plus further Group I wins in the Australian Cup, Underwood Stakes and Chipping Norton Stakes. Octagonal retired to stud after 28 starts with a record of 14 wins (10xGroup1), 7 seconds (6 in GI or GII races) and a third. He ended his racing career with a stakes tally of $A5,892,231, the highest of any galloper in Australasia to that point.
Octagonal stands at Woodlands Stud, NSW. He is the Sire of Australian Group 1 winning brothers Lonhro and Niello, the South African Group 1 winner, Suntagonal. In 1998 he stood at Haras du Quesnay in France where his most prominent offspring was Laverock whose wins include two Group 1 races: the Prix d'Ispahan at Longchamp Racecourse in Paris and the Gran Premio del Jockey Club at Milan, Italy's, San Siro Racecourse.
On the ASBO front following previous posts re; Obama portraits I managed to locate a website in which you can create your own versions, this is good linking and bringing subjects together, I'm impressing myself here! so I had a go.....

horse whispering

Monty Roberts, the American horse trainer and author, best known as the "original horse whisperer", has been around the animals all of his 73 years but has never seen one 50 metres tall. A computerised impression of Mark Wallinger's giant sculpture drew a gasp. "I'm absolutely gobsmacked," he said.
The former stunt double, who, after watching wild mustangs in Nevada as a boy, devised ways of communicating with horses that did not involve forcibly "breaking them in", is not just wowed by the scale of the proposed sculpture. "This man is a genius, there's no question about it. There's an incredible sense of balance and symmetry to the horse. I don't know if he even knows what he's done in terms of the skeletal balance and symmetry of the horse - he may well do. But often times sculptors ... simply have a mind's eye that recreates what they see as perfection. [Wallinger] has captured reality to the extreme. Often times it doesn't have to a person who really understands horses at all but they have the artistry to imprint in their minds what they see as excellence, and then to do it."
A fan also of the ancient white horses cut into chalk hillsides of the English countryside, Roberts has unsuccessfully asked for a similar one, of his own, at his California ranch. Pat, his wife, is a sculptor, with a perhaps inevitable horse specialisation. "I've tried desperately for the last 10 or 15 years to get my wife to do one on a hill that overlooks our farm. I've said to her, 'I'll provide the stones, get a horse on that hillside'."
As someone who concedes he "can't tolerate" abstract work, Roberts admires Wallinger's unadorned reality, and cannot wait to see the full- size sculpture. "I just feel like the guy and I have an eye that is similar. Not that I can make it happen. I've tried that damned thing with the clay and the clay doesn't go where I want it to go. To see it would be overwhelming. It would be a shock to the system to drive down the road and see that. I would love it, myself. It's just pretty amazing."
And what if the horse, which, to Roberts, looks like "a classic hunter", were real, and even the loftiest ladder wouldn't permit a soothing blow into the nostrils?
"I wouldn't call it frightening at all," the horse whisperer said. "Awesome, stunning - but I suppose that if you didn't know you were coming up on it, it would be a real shock to the system."

A horse with a name

As said, I would post more horse connections, someone at the telegraph had the same idea
I'll post this list and add some more myself, some overlap
White horse video
The horse in Guernica
At the heart of Picasso's monumental depiction of the bombing of a northern Spanish town by the Nazis in 1937 stands the twisted, agonised figure of a horse, which has been pierced by a spear. The suffering of the townspeople all around is echoed in the human skull discernible in the shape of the horse's nostrils and teeth.
The Rain Horse
"At the wood top, with the silvered grey light coming in behind it, the black horse was standing under the oaks, its head high and alert, its ears pricked, watching him." Never has equine hostility been more effectively captured than in Ted Hughes's short story about a walker menaced during a downpour on a treacherously muddy northern hillside.
The Guinness surf horses
Lloyd's Bank's black beauty may have enjoyed a longer screen life, but the best commercial with an equine element was Guinness's black-and-white, 119-second epic of 1999 in which a curling, crashing wall of Hawaiian surf transmogrifies into a thundering stampede of wild white horses. Two years later, it was voted number one in Channel 4's 100 Greatest TV Adverts.
Khartoum in The Godfather
In Mario Puzo's bestselling Mob story, movie producer Jack Woltz makes the mistake of not acquiescing to a request from Don Corleone, with the result that he wakes up one morning to find himself in bed with the severed head of his prized stud. The white silk sheets are ruined for ever.
Patti Smith's Horses
New York punk poet Smith looks rather equine herself on the cover of Horses, her incendiary debut album of 1975. The sprawling track Land is a savage, surreal and delirious odyssey, which takes off when "suddenly Johnny gets the feeling he's being surrounded by/Horses, horses, horses, horses/Coming in in all directions/White shining silver studs with their nose in flames."
"Coconuts" in Monty Python and the Holy Grail
King Arthur "rides" up to an imposing castle as his trusty servant Patsy provides appropriate sound effects. The gatekeeper isn't fooled, exclaiming: "You're using coconuts!" There then follows a ludicrous debate about the logistics of tropical fruit being carried to temperate Mercia by migrating swallows.
Black Beauty
"The autobiography of a horse, translated from the original equine by Anna Sewell," claims the title page of the 1877 novel about the upbringing, career (as a London taxi-horse), love life (with the playful Ginger) and happy twilight years of the best-loved horse in literature.
Edwin Muir's The Horses
"Barely a twelvemonth after/The seven days war that put the world to sleep,/Late in the evening the strange horses camee_SLps" Muir's powerful poem presents a devastated post-apocalyptic world transformed by the arrival of an equine population that uncomplainingly pulls ploughs and provides transport – "Their coming our beginning".
Mr Ed
In the American sitcom of the early Sixties, architect Wilbur Post finds that the previous owners of his new house have left behind a horse who engages him – and only him – in conversation. It was said the horse "playing" Mr Ed had peanut butter spread on his gums to make him move his lips, though it later emerged that his trainer tugged on a nylon wire at least some of the time.
The Byrds' Chestnut Mare
"I'm gonna catch that horse if I can/And when I do I'll give her my brand." The Byrds' strange country-rock epic about an elusive wild horse refers to her as "a fine lady" who will be "just like a wife". Then things start getting really weird as they fly towards the sun, encounter exploding seagulls and end up in a mile-deep crevice.
Whistlejacket
George Stubbs's massive, magnificent 1762 painting of a celebrated racehorse marks a radical break with convention by dramatically floating its equine subject in empty space – though there's a theory that this is actually an unfinished equestrian portrait of George III, minus monarch and background landscape.
Seabiscuit
Laura Hillenbrand's 2001 biography re-established the Thirties horseracing legend in the American psyche. Hollywood followed her lead two years later to bring the story to the big screen, thrillingly placing us right in the middle of the thunderous racing action.
The Lascaux herd
Of the 600 verified depictions of animals on the walls of the Lascaux caves in central France more than half are horses leaping gracefully through what is, in effect, a 16,000-year-old comic strip.
The horses in Equus
In Peter Shaffer's 1973 play, Alan, a seemingly well-adjusted stable lad is one night driven inexplicably to blind six horses: an overworked psychiatrist is charged with finding out why. Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe played Alan in the West End and last month(Sept) opened to rave reviews in the Broadway production.
Thelwell's ponies
An acute observer of countryside ways, Punch cartoonist Norman Thelwell struck a chord with his first pony picture in 1953. The fan mail poured in and his niche for charming, gently humorous drawings of little girls and their reluctant mounts (each with "a leg at each corner") was established.
Silver in The Lone Ranger
"Hi-yo Silver, away!" The long-running TV series boasted probably the best-known horseback battle-cry, uttered as the masked Texas Ranger gallops through the desert dust to dispense justice accompanied by his loyal companion Tonto (on his own horse Scout).
Pilgrim in The Horse Whisperer
After a bone-crunching accident, jittery rider Grace and her mount Pilgrim are whizzed across the States by Mom to Montana, where all three fall under the spell of tetchy, taciturn rancher Tom Booker.
America's A Horse With No Name
The band America's gentle, hippy anthem about a horseback journey through a scorched desert was actually written in rain-sodden Britain and features such memorably silly lines as, "The first thing I met was a fly with a buzz" and "The heat was hot."
Rocinante in Don Quixote
The self-styled knight-errant expresses unbounded confidence in his skinny mount, fancying that "neither Alexander's Bucephalus nor Cid's Babieca was equal to him". He then spends four days trying to think of what to call him, finally plumping for Rocinante, a name "lofty and sonorous".
The mount in Napoleon Crossing the St Bernard Pass
With its rearing steed and heroic windswept rider, this is one of the most celebrated equestrian images in art, painted by Jacques-Louis David – in five versions – to mark the First Consul's jaunt into Italy at the head of 40,000 troops in 1800.
Pi in National Velvet
In the 1944 movie adaptation of Enid Bagnold's story, 12-year-old Elizabeth Taylor stars as plucky Velvet Brown, who wins Pi in the village lottery and, with the help of trainer Mickey Rooney, eventually gallops to glory in the Grand National. Heart-warming to heart-stopping excitement.
Champion the Wonder Horse
"The time will come when everyone will know/The name of Champion the Wonder Horse!" The Fifties television series is memorable more for its rollicking theme song than its tales of a wild stallion repeatedly required to rescue his hapless 12-year-old friend Ricky.
Shadowfax in The Lord of the Rings
"Shadowfax, the lord of all horses," murmurs wise old wizard Gandalf warmly as his beloved silver-grey stallion – the swiftest steed in Middle-Earth – trots into view.
Uffington White Horse
Why Britain's oldest hillside figure was cut into the chalky slopes of the Berkshire Downs 3,000 years ago remains a mystery, although it's said that, since the elegant galloping creature can be properly appreciated only from the air, it was created for the bird's-eye view of the gods.
The Houyhnhnms in Gulliver's Travels
They're sophisticated intellectuals who practise eugenics, prize reason above all else, and have no word for "lie". And they're horses. Once Gulliver has persuaded the Houyhnhnms that he's not the scruffy human-like Yahoo they mistake him for, he feels more at home than anywhere on his travels – until they banish him back to Europe.
The White Horses
A teatime TV favourite in the late Sixties, imported from Europe by the BBC and over-dubbed, White Horses featured the adventures of Belgrade schoolgirl Julia, who holidays on the stud farm where her Uncle Dimitri trains Lipizzaners. The theme song went top-10 in 1968.
Trigger (1)
Warbling cowboy Roy Rogers's palomino buddy starred with him in more than 100 films and was immortalised in the song A Four-Legged Friend ("He'll never let you down"). Forty three years after his death, the stuffed figure of Trigger is the star attraction at the Rogers museum in Branson, Missouri, which draws 200,000 visitors a year.
Trigger (2)
"One lunchtime Ted saw Ernie's horse and cart outside her door/It drove him mad to find it was still there at half past four." That horse was Trigger, who, according to Benny Hill's 1971 number-one hit Ernie, pulled "the fastest milkcart in the west".
Hercules in Steptoe and Son
Domiciled in Oil Drum Lane with the eternally warring rag-and-bone men Albert and Harold, Hercules was seen every week in the opening credits, accompanied by the suitably plodding theme tune Old Ned.
The Wooden Horse
Despite playing a key role in this tense Second World War POW-camp drama, the eponymous hero is distinctly lacking in noble mien – and the acting's a bit creaky.
source:By Marc Lee

I have some up my sleeve and will post shortly, although I spent time finding images

A horse with no name...

A giant white horse has been chosen as a new £2m art commission for south east England dubbed "Angel of the South".
The design, by former Turner Prize winner Mark Wallinger, was selected from a three-strong shortlist as part of the Ebbsfleet Landmark Project.
His design for the public art commission will see a horse standing on all four hooves at 33 times life-size.
Once built, it will dominate the north Kent landscape, standing as high as Nelson's Column at about 164ft (50m).
The announcement was made at Swan Valley Community School in Swanscombe in Kent, which overlooks the Springhead Park area where the giant statue will be built.
The landmark, which will be close to Eurostar's international station, is intended as an iconic symbol representing the regeneration of north-west Kent, and the eastwards growth of London.
'Tough competition'
Mr Wallinger, who was chosen over artists Daniel Buren and Richard Deacon, described it as a "tremendously exciting project".
"There was some very tough competition and I am honoured that the horse has won through," he said.
His team will be involved in an application for planning permission from Gravesham Borough Council, which is expected to take about 12 months.
The Ebbsfleet Landmark Project has been dubbed the "Angel of the South", in reference to Antony Gormley's Angel of the North sculpture which overlooks the A1 motorway in Gateshead.
A prancing white horse is the logo for the county council and has been the symbol of Kent for hundreds of years.
However, a sculpture of the Invicta, supported by Kent County Council in response to Mr Wallinger's entry, was rejected by judges last year.
Victoria Pomery, chairman of the Ebbsfleet Landmark Project's selection panel, said their decision was based on "artistic merit".
She added: "Mark is a superb artist of world renown and his sculpture will become a real landmark for Ebbsfleet and the whole region."
Last week, organisers of the project said they were still hoping it would be in place for the London 2012 Olympics, despite the recession.
Project manager Mark Davy revealed to the BBC that there could be short-term funding problems for the Ebbsfleet scheme.
It was commissioned by Eurostar, London & Continental Railways and Land Securities, the developers of Ebbsfleet Valley.

Great news, something for us southerners!

which got me thinking - famous white horses..... then famous horses so here goes... more will be added shortly as and when my mind comes up with them!

Tony Hart

Tony Hart

Artist and children's presenter Tony Hart has died, aged 83.
Hart, who lived in Surrey, had suffered from health problems for a number of years, including two strokes. His family said he died peacefully.
Isn't it sad when you hear that one of your favourite childhood influences pasts away. For those old enough to remember Tony Hart will recall beautiful memories of a charming man presenting art programs aimed at children who loved art. He gave us insights to techniques and ways of producing art with his long standing plasticine friend morph. The gallery section was always my favourite, I used to sit there in front of the wooden surround television remarking on different pieces as they appeared claiming that I knew how they did it or I could do better; the fact was, they all entered their artwork, I however never got around to it (nothing new there!)

Before his Take Hart program he appeared on a program that I always thought was aimed at people who were deaf, today I don't know if that is true - I will have to look further into this. The program had a brilliant title image - Vision On - it looked like a bug when vertical, then when viewed horizontally revealed what the title was, as a very young boy this was amazing.

He was a gentle man, I last saw him at the Affordable Art Fair in Battersea where I was exhibiting at the time, he was running a short fun session or children, he looked extremely frail but to go up to him and say thank you was very special.

Whether using paints, clay, textiles, foodstuffs or a cast-off object of almost any description, Hart had the magical ability to produce competent, entertaining pieces of work at impressive speed and in an unpatronising fashion. His avuncular, mildly eccentric manner made him the ideal host for children of all ages; indeed, at the height of one of his popularity in the mid 1980s, Hart’s request that viewers send in their own pictures to exhibit in “The Gallery”, a large wall showcasing their efforts, generated 6,000 submissions a week.
Throughout this time Hart also worked on the original Blue Peter programmes, the first of which was broadcast in October 1958. In the weekly transmissions he told and illustrated stories, invariably about a little white elephant called Packi. His loose involvement with Blue Peter continued into the 1960s with the creation of the galleon which became the programme’s well-known logo . Aware of Blue Peter’s enormous popularity, Hart asked for a penny for every time his design was used. His request was turned down and he was paid a flat fee of £100 instead

The affable presenter inspired children to paint and draw on shows like Vision On, Take Hart and Hartbeat for nearly 50 years before he retired in 2001.
Fellow artist Rolf Harris led tributes, calling Hart "a very gentle and talented guy".
"He enthused and inspired a whole generation of kids into creating their own works of art, simple or complex."
Hart's agent, Roc Renals, said the presenter had died in the early hours of Sunday morning.
He said: "I was for many years his best friend, agent, manager and publicist. He suffered two strokes many years ago and his health declined since then."
"Thousands and thousands of young people who are now grown up will thank him for inspiring them to take up art," he added.
Wilf Lunn, Hart's friend who worked with him on Vision On for nine years, said he was a television pioneer.
"His legacy was the fact he really started all these children's programmes, Art Attack and all that, and he was the guy, right at the beginning.
"And he was the guy who had all these little tricks that teachers used to use because they make things look easy, and we got people into doing it. And he was such a nice man."

street art and handcuffs

A street artist famous for his red, white and blue "Hope" posters of President Barack Obama has been arrested on warrants accusing him of tagging property with graffiti, police said Saturday.Shepard Fairey was arrested Friday night on his way to the Institute of Contemporary Art for a kickoff event for his first solo exhibition, called "Supply and Demand."

The story of his famous Obama portrait, a large-scale, mixed-media stencilled collage, is already taking on the mythic qualities of a quintessential American narrative. Emerging from humble beginnings in the back alleys of Los Angeles, the portrait became an instant sensation, a pop culture "icon" that was willingly embraced by the Obama political machine.
Before the President-elect sweared his oath of office on Abraham Lincoln's personal Bible, the portrait has became part of the Smithsonian's permanent collection at the National Portrait Gallery, which is conveniently only a few blocks from the White House. Fittingly for the narrative of change, the Obama portrait was donated to the gallery by the head of Mr Obama's transition team, Tony Podesta, and his wife, Heather.
The striking resemblance to the Che Guevara portrait which has decorated generations of student bed-sits, has not been dwelt on. But a little way from where Fairey's portrait will hang there is a small portrait of the Cuban revolutionary by Charles "Chaco" Chavez, drawn from the famous photograph by Alberto Korda.
The portrait gallery is better known for its stuffy collection of George Washington portraits than street art, but the museum's curator, Carolyn Kinder Carr, said simply: "We all fell in love with it. We always like portraits that reflect a particular moment in history, and we like the fact that it is an image that resides in popular culture."
He is becoming the ‘darling’ of the under-art world – deemed along side as Banksy, many say that his posters are a throwback to past political representations

Looking and scouting around the interweb I came across this piece written by artist Mark Vallen and thanks to him for this very eredite piece.

What initially disturbed me about the art of Shepard Fairey is that it displays none of the line, modeling and other idiosyncrasies that reveal an artist’s unique personal style. His imagery appears as though it’s xeroxed or run through some computer graphics program; that is to say, it is machine art that any second-rate art student could produce. In fact, I’ve never seen any evidence indicating Fairey can draw at all. Even the art of Andy Warhol, reliant as it was upon photography and mass commercial imagery, displayed passages of gestural drawing and flamboyant brushstrokes.

Fairey has developed a successful career through expropriating and recontextualizing the artworks of others, which in and of itself does not make for bad art. Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein based his paintings on the world of American comic strips and advertising imagery, but one was always aware that Lichtenstein was taking his images from comic books; that was after all the point, to examine the blasé and artificial in modern American commercial culture. When Lichtenstein painted Look Mickey, a 1961 oil on canvas portrait of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, everyone was cognizant of the artist’s source material - they were in on the joke. By contrast, Fairey simply filches artworks and hopes that no one notices - the joke is on you.Plagiarism is the deliberate passing off of someone else’s work as your own, and Shepard Fairey may be unfamiliar with the term - but not the act. This article is not about the innocent absorption of visual ideas that later materialize unconsciously in an artist’s work, we do after all live in a maelstrom of images and we can’t help but be affected by them. Nor am I referring to an artist’s direct influences - which artist can claim not to have been inspired by techniques or styles employed by others? What I am concerned with is the brazen, intentional copying of already existing artworks created by others - sometimes duplicating the originals without alteration - and then deceiving people by pawning off the counterfeit works as original creations.

After further searching I came across these images which have a link to Fairey's Hope pice, they appeal to my sense of humour

Damien Hirst and Comic Relief - now you are having a laugh

He's at it again, more publicity for the British artist Damien Hirst. Not satisfied with overloading the art market with his art, continuous comments on the art world he has now ventured into charity - not giving money from his art gotten gains but by designing a label for a bottle of wine or two. Comic relief are to get a % from the takings but in my opinion he's again using it for his own publicity surely he could bypass all this and just donate.

The former wild man of British art, Damien Hirst, has designed an exclusive label for two new wines to help raise money for Comic Relief.The Bristol-born veteran 'Young British Artist', who shot to international fame in 1991 with The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a shark pickled in formaldehyde, has put his talent to creating a wine label for the charity. The wines, featuring Hirst's signature dot motif, could become something of a collectors' item given the artist's profile – Hirst's diamond encrusted skull, For the Love of God, sold for £50 million in August last year. Red nose Red Pinotage Shiraz 2008 and Red nose White Chenin Blanc 2008 will retail at £4.99 a bottle. £1 from each bottle sold will be donated to Comic Relief. Produced by SAAM Mountain Vineyards in the South African region of Paarl, the wines were chosen for the project by Jancis Robinson MW and Tim Atkin MW, whose tasting notes appear on the back. SAAM, meaning together in Afrikaans, is a new venture that unites forty South African growers who manage wineries from Paarl to the Durbanville Hills. The wines go on sale throughout the UK on 1 February.
Source decanter news

I've just dropped a canvas!

Accidents will happen, (Elvis Costello maybe), anyhow occasionally we drop things, knock items over, touch and mark objects. Why am I mentioning this, well, I cam across this and thought it was worth posting. I haven't just dropped a canvas, it fell off the studio wall as I was setting it to take a photo of it, no damage to report!

When he accidentally put his elbow through his $139m Picasso in 2006, Las Vegas casino king Steve Wynn only had himself to blame. But who stabbed a Rembrandt? And why was a Rodin sculpture blown up? John Hind puts 13 unlucky works of art in the frame

Pablo Picasso goes 'Pop'
One day after informing them he'd just agreed to sell Le Reve for a record $139m to a hedge fund manager, Las Vegas casino kingpin Steve Wynn invited guests to view it in his office. While explaining the painting's provenance, he put his elbow through it, exclaiming: 'Oh no, oh shit!' A conservator charged $90,500 for 'rissverklebung' (thread reintegration) and then Wynn put in a claim to Lloyds for $54m, based on a post-restoration valuation of $85m. 'Picasso used the cheapest thin canvas - and it went "Pop!", like shrink-wrap,' noted Wynn. 'I almost made the biggest mistake of my life selling that painting, but I got lucky and poked a hole in it.'

Diego Velazquez gets slashed
After repeatedly slashing the naked back of the woman in the Rokeby Venus at London's National Gallery in 1914, suffragette Mary Richardson explained: 'I tried to destroy the picture of the most beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the government for destroying Mrs Pankhurst. Justice is as much an element of beauty as colour and outline.' Thirty-eight years later she gave a different explanation for her actions: 'I didn't like the way men gaped at it all day long.' In 1918 three suffragists attacked 13 paintings in Manchester City Art Gallery with hammers - three of the works were by Victorian painter George Frederic Watts, the worst damaged being his Prayer

Rodin is dynamited
In 1970 one of Auguste Rodin's original casts of his world-famous sculpture The Thinker, situated outside the Cleveland Museum of Art in Ohio, was dynamited by members of the radical group The Weathermen, who later accidentally blew themselves up. The lower parts of the legs of The Thinker were annihilated, its base expanded, twisted and contorted. Since the decision was made to re-mount it in its damaged form, a generation has grown up in Cleveland believing that the sculpture was conceived that way by Rodin. At Tate Britain in 2003 Rodin's The Kiss was (with permission) wrapped in a mile of string by artist Cornelia Parker, prompting outraged artist Piers Butler to cut the string.

Mondrian is vomited on
The head conservator at New York's Moma says that decisions to undertake restoration, such as 'pigment work-ups', are often based on whether 'the thrill has gone from a painting'. Similar motivation was claimed by artist Jubal Brown, who ate blue cake icing and blue Jell-O before entering Moma in order to projectile vomit on to Piet Mondrian's Composition With Red and Blue - to 'liven it up... I found its lifelessness threatening'. Brown had months earlier vomited red on to Raoul Dufy's Harbour at le Havre in the Art Gallery of Ontario, where the head conservator said: 'Fingerprints can be much more difficult. Touching - of abstracts especially - is chronic here.'

Rembrandt is slashed, slashed again and then sprayed with acid
The Nightwatch holds the dubious honour of being attacked three times in Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum. In 1911 an ex-navy chef, disgruntled by discharge and considering it the state's most valuable possession, attacked it with a knife 'to cool my anger'. In 1975 an unemployed teacher, declaring 'Jesus sent me', slashed it repeatedly, later explaining: 'Rembrandt was the master of light, but when he painted The Nightwatch he was under the influence of the dark.' In 1990 an escaped psychiatric patient sprayed sulphuric acid on it. Released nine years later, the same attacker cut a large circular hole in Picasso's painting Nude in Front of the Garden

Andres Serrano is given a good kicking and then gets hammered
In 1997 the director of the National Gallery in Melbourne closed down an exhibition after two attacks in two days upon Serrano's Piss Christ. In the first attack, Christian John Allen Haywood wrenched the photograph - of Christ on the cross submerged in urine - from the wall and kicked it; in the second, a youth hammered the photograph eight times while another youth 'distracted guards' by jump-kicking a juxtaposed Serrano portrait of a Ku Klux Klan member. Last year, hooded neo-Nazis broke into the Kulturen Gallery in Skane, Sweden, to attack photographs in Serrano's The History of Sex, then posted film of it on YouTube.

Marcus Harvey is splashed with ink
In 1997, at the Sensation show at London's Royal Academy, artist Peter Fisher threw red and blue ink at Harvey's Myra, hours after another artist, Jacques Role, had thrown eggs at it. Sensation, which also included Tracey Emin's Everyone I Ever Slept With (later destroyed in a £60m warehouse fire) subsequently moved to Brooklyn's Museum of Art. There, Chris Ofili's Holy Virgin Mary (portraying an African Virgin decorated with dung and pornography) was sprayed with white paint by retired teacher Dennis Heiner, whose blind wife found it blasphemous. When Mayor Guiliani withheld the museum's grant, 200 'art lovers' threw dung at a painting of Guiliani as the Virgin Mary.

Claude Monet is punched
One midnight last year, five drunks somehow accessed the rear of the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, wherein one of them punched a hole in Monet's prized painting of the Seine. Following the attack, the minister of culture promised to seek stronger sanctions against the painting's 'desecrators'. A week later, having visited Avignon's Museum of Contemporary Art and kissed an all-white abstract painting by Cy Twombly, a woman appeared in court and heard the owner's lawyer declare her lipstick stain 'as aggressive as a punch'. She insisted that she loved Twombly's work, had been 'overcome with passion' in its presence and 'thought he would understand'.

Leonardo Da Vinci is blasted with a shotgun
In 1987, for reasons he couldn't explain, ex-soldier Robert Cambridge drew a 12-bore shotgun from under his coat and fired at the Virgin's breast in Da Vinci's Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist at London's National Gallery, resulting in 'cauliflower-like' damage. In 1962 an artist had thrown an ink bottle at the same painting, asking afterwards: 'Would you be prepared to die to protect it?' Also at the National, in 1990 Federico Barocci's Madonna and Child was slashed by Martin Came, an art lover experiencing 'subconscious distress' in relation to the painting due to recent separation from his wife and child.

Pablo Picasso is graffitied
During an anti-war protest at NY's Moma in 1974, 'KILL LIES ALL' was sprayed on Guernica in red by Tony Shafrazi - then an artist, now a top art dealer. He explained: 'I wanted to retrieve Guernica from art history and give it life. I wanted to trespass beyond that invisible barrier that no one is allowed to cross; to dwell within the act of the painting's creation, put my hand within it.' The following year Guernica was moved to Spain, where it was exhibited in a bullet-proof container with armed guards on either side. Picasso, noted Shafrazi, once painted over a Modigliani.

Damien Hirst is rubbished and inked
Art not recognised as art has often fallen prey to cleaners. The most celebrated case is cleaner Emmanuel Asare's bin-bagging at London's Eyestorm Gallery in 2001 of Damien Hirst's installation Painting by Numbers, a representation of his studio and its detritus. 'I didn't think for a second it was art,' explained Asare. Hirst found this 'hysterical'. Less so the pouring of black ink into his sculpture Away From the Flock during an exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in 1994. The perpetrator, artist Mark Bridger, re-labelled the piece Black Sheep. 'I was providing an interesting addendum to his work,' said Bridger in court.

Michelangelo takes a hammering
In St Peter's in Rome in 1972, geologist Laszlo Toth attacked the Virgin cradling Jesus in Michelangelo's Pieta, removing her arm at the elbow and most of her nose, and chipping her eye. He explained: 'Today is my 33rd birthday, the age Christ died. I did it because the mother of God does not exist. I am Christ. I am Michelangelo. Now I can die.' And in 1991, an unsuccessful artist hammered a toe off David, leading conservators to discover the origins of Michelangelo's marble.

Tracey Emins bed springs are tested
In 1999, at Tate Britain, artists Yuan Cai and JJ Xi intervened in Tracey Emin's installation My Bed. 'Although they got on the bed for a few seconds, mostly they just threatened guards with kung-fu kicks,' said witness Harry Pye. 'They realised we were serious artists - doing it purely from a creative point,' said Xi. 'Don't take seriously Emin saying we were "like failed artists threatening to jump off Waterloo Bridge unless given a gallery" - probably she got drunk.' In 2000, Cai and Xi urinated on Marcel Duchamp's La Fontaine to alleged cheers from Tate Modern visitors.

art work by paul talbot

artwork by paul talbot

Came across this site the other week, had a play withit and produced several quick videos for my rugby club, well they are not quite videos just another way of doing a power point I suppose. It costs nothing to makew a thirty second pece, I subscribed and you get a lot more, good fun and a good way to put photos together

some recent work - drawing for money!

Recently, I have undertaken some small drawing work - group and couples approx. A4 the Napoleon is A2, all have been drawn on hand made paper and using a HB propelling pencil - 0.3mm lead. The challenge has been not just getting the likeness right, but more importantly for me not using an eraser, partly because if you rub out the surface of the paper changes and therefore the mark made is not one intended, also in trying to work in this manner makes every mark matters and instilles a requirement to be precise

The first drawing - ordered from Czech on a trip their last year from Petra who is a major fan of the French hero. Over a drink or six I agreed to produce a drawing for him, not something I would normally do and tried putting it off as much as possible anyhow, the night before he was due to arrive from Czech I spent a couple of intense hours in my studio working to complete it! I almost completed by the early hours of the morning, only requiring final touches. The next day at work I took it in with me to finish off before school, which, gladly I did. The result was that a colleague saw the drawing remarked how excellent it was and then commissioned my to do a drawing for her, from an old family photograph! (the original was not in great condition and only 8cm x 4cm!!

This has led onto more drawing commissions, the later being of a colleagues sister and fiance for their wedding present/use for table places at the wedding itself.

I must admit, I don't particularly enjoy working from photos in this way although I set myself little challenges with each one. The family group was to get the detail of the garden in the background, the couple texture and folds of the clothing.

Anyhow, I have a few more in the pipeline and the money I get is a nice bonus

How much heat can a koala bear!

We might be in the midst of snow flurries, but spare a thought for those down under particularly those in Adelaide; where temperature are soring above 40 degrees.

Sent this via email from the Adelaide times: because of the hot weather koalas are suffering through lack of water, locals have been out trying to give them some water to keep them alive, below are a couple of images taken whilst helping them

Do you reckon we would do the same for squirrels over here - doubt it!

source: Adelaide Now

shortening the gap!

Back again!! Well this time more determined to keep up to date with writing this blog, updating my website as well as continuing to keep tracks of the rugby website I administrate for.

At present, like so many other I am suffering with the snow.. well not really suffering as such, just getting the bottom of my jeans wet when walking the dog (since last really posted we have now got a new member to the family - Scruff the dog, a terrier cross puppy)

Have endured two full snow days this week and a half day today - taking just over 2 hours to drive to 5 miles to work this morning!!
I have been doing a little bit of artwork: two drawing commissions, and working out sketches for a painting based on the history of football ladybird book that I received as a present in a box set from my good friend Oz (more on him later - music wise)
I thought I'd break myself in slowly before getting up to full steam!

The recent snow flurries have brought excitement in the household, namely the dog's first experience of the cold white stuff. He has loved it, unlike the venture into the sea during the summer in Cornwall so I thought I'd post a few images to get the ball rolling as it were. The aim is to update with the intensity that I had previously done (hopefully)

view from kitchen door - 8am Monday morning as taken by JJ

The Art of Snow

Snow Aliens created by JJ