news from the shed

pinner senior

2011-05-30T12:33:00.001+01:00

pinner senior, a set on Flickr.

mini 4 pumm

2011-05-30T12:32:00.001+01:00

mini 4 pumm, a set on Flickr.

Functionality of Maintenance 2

2011-05-30T12:31:00.000+01:00

Functionality of Maintenance 2

The vertical learning curve, the world that is technology

It seemed to me that I could get into the swing of websites, https, blogging, and maintaining them. At one point I was on top of it, hours spent sitting at the laptop, cruising information on the web, responding to various message boards the list is endless. I was good at the time, immersed in the recycling of current art news, giving sound bites and generally giving a good well informed read. Using online galleries, as can be seen in links on website I tried to widen the word of Paul Talbot/News from the Shed – all became overwhelming, where do these people find the time (functionality of Maintenance 5). I set up a myself space, worked on that for a while, didn’t get into it and currently I have no idea of its status. So where does the learning curve start to become vertical? Discovering Facebook has opened up another can of social worms – not just updating your status, responding to ‘friends’ but being the type of guy I am, had to take it a little bit further, setting up groups, being administrator for many groups – how much time this takes up I have no real idea, its live every time I log onto the computer (alas not at work – some grace there, but hayho, found that I can write/respond via my mobile, will it never end!)

Everything moves at an incredible pace in technology – just coming back to the posting on blogs seeing how there are new options available linked to this, link to that, upgrade this, upgrade that a plethora of access and add ons to extend ones web identity. So what to dip my toes into web applications? I’ve set up a couple of twitter accounts; yes follow me, one as a practice (functionality of Maintenance 4) at this moment of posting, I am getting to grips with it, understanding RT #@ and all the rest, I know what will happen, there will be a need to tweet almost daily, if not more so and probably only get two followers!! Indeed I tweeted this morning, from my mobile, what do you say? Give an update on your current work@ tell the ‘world’ that you have just had a nice bacon roll! Something to think about, making it useful not just banal crap that I could write, then again somewhere I rant on will be a good startJ look I have just used an emoticon, the learning curve may have just levelled out no way, it builds on, just how much I want to develop

Just maybe my paintings will get there!

2011-05-22T21:09:00.000+01:00

Next generation turns its back on Emin and Hirst's conceptual artworks

Tracey Emin is enjoying a retrospective at the Hayward, but the country's rising stars take a more practical approach

The reign of "the concept" in modern British art is finally over: long live "the object". As some of the former rebels of the notorious Young British Artist movement are accused of selling out to "the establishment", a new generation is taking their place, flaunting an altogether new aesthetic.

The freshest art on the contemporary scene appears to have turned its back on the ironic jokes and personal confessions epitomised by Tracey Emin's notorious unmade bed and Damien Hirst's dead floating shark. Emin's high-profile retrospective at the Hayward Gallery on the South Bank may be pulling in the London crowds, but she alienated many of her peers last week by confirming her Tory sympathies and backing the government's latest round of arts cuts. Damien Hirst also ruffled some liberal feathers by happily rubbing shoulders with billionaires at the last Davos summit.

And as the most famous and iconoclastic of the YBAs start to lose their shine as role models, the art world's best-known curators and commentators claim a new earnestness is sweeping the country's better art schools and informing the work of their successors.

One of the biggest names in contemporary painting is on the shortlist for the coveted Turner prize this year. George Shaw, at 44, is roughly the same age as both Hirst or Emin yet is one of the leaders of the emerging "serious" tendency. Shaw concentrates on the oddly beguiling nature of ugly cityscapes with his watercolours and enamel paint studies. He insists that his work is not a reaction to the tricksy habits of the YBAs, but art critics beg to differ.

With his show, The Sly and Unseen Day, opening on Tuesday at the South London Gallery, the Coventry-born artist says he is bemused to find himself the centre of attention: "My work was not done as a response. It was a conversation I was having with myself. Then I noticed other people were interested and I had to pinch myself."

Shaw originally intended to become a performance artist and studied installation, photography, video and sound, before discarding it all. "I realised a lot of stuff I was doing was just rubbish. I was just adopting the same sort of things that had gone on before. So I went back to what I used to think at college, which was that the most shocking thing you could do would be to make a watercolour of a tree." At that point Shaw felt "an installation with a dead baby in it" had become the new conformity.

Other coming stars are both younger and, for now, relatively obscure. On Wednesday last week the annual Catlin art prize, which celebrates promising new work, was awarded to 22-year-old Russell Hill from Rugby. Hill works with everyday objects to expose the hidden threats or contradictions lying dormant in apparently banal things such as air fresheners or an oil can.

"The main thing for me is to make my work as articulate as possible in terms of themes and messages," Hill said yesterday. "I always maintain the function of the object. That's important to me. If I change an oil can, then it's not an oil can. If there are elements of ambiguity when people see it, I have to accept that."

He uses juxtaposition to point up his ideas about objects. So the "DIY nostalgia" of an item such as an oil can is coupled with fabric softener then displayed in a deliberately "clinical, harsh setting – like a hospital product".

"It is a piece about two lubricants," he explains. "There is a real sense of exploitation in my work. I tend to strip back objects and make people more aware of the underhand nature of the things that we see around us."

Hill's influences, he claims, come from abroad rather than from famous YBAs, although he acknowledges a debt to Martin Creed, the Scot who won the 2001 Turner prize with his flickering light in an empty room.

Justin Hammond, curator of the Catlin show and editor of the prize's guide, who spotted the artist at his degree show in Wimbledon, has found that many young art graduates are focusing on objects in the world around them.

"There's a lot more serious work in the past couple of years, a lot less jokey one-liners and less frivolity," he said. "Instead, there's a lot of work with statistics now, for example, and there are more real objects being used in sculpture. Russell's work is so precise, so clinical and so clean. It was obvious someone had obsessed over it. He was the unanimous choice this year."

Joanne Hummel Newell, who will be exhibiting her work at a satellite show at the Venice Biennale next month, is another artist excited by the significance of objects. The 28-year-old uses found items in combination with collage to make intriguing sculptures.

And one of the stars of next week's prestigious sculpture show, The Shape of Things to Come at the Saatchi Gallery in south-west London, is also known for shedding new light on items of rubbish. David Batchelor makes installations from things he has found on the streets of the capital then turns them into brightly coloured light boxes. His work is a mission to prove that left-overs can be made beautiful.

"When I make works from light boxes, or old plastic bottles with lights inside, I hope the illumination suspends their objecthood to some degree, and makes the viewer see them a little differently – see them as colours before seeing them as objects," he has explained. At 55, Batchelor, who is Scottish, has blazed a trail for this kind of practical sculpture, while the YBAs experimented with conceptual ruses.

Not all emerging artists have turned away from the Concept. For the first time, the Catlin prize line-up for 2011 included a performance artist, Leah Capaldi. For the show Capaldi sprays two actors with a bottle of Chanel perfume each before they walk off around the Tramshed gallery in Shoreditch, East London. "The idea came from when I was at the British Museum a while ago looking at a statue and a woman walked past me wearing so much perfume it was unbelievable. I found it stifling and had a real physical reaction; I had to walk to the other end of the gallery to get out of that space," she recalls.

Visitors to the Catlin show can judge the impact for themselves at noon today when Capaldi performs for the last time before the exhibition closes at 6pm.

For Sarah Ryan, director of online gallery Newbloodart, the prospect of spotting emerging new trends is appealing. Her yearly task of visiting 100 summer degree shows is just beginning.

"We have just started with Oxford Brookes at the weekend and noticed a lot of integrated work that brings in all the sensory aspects, a more multi-discipline approach. This is immersive work, using sculpture and sound and performance. Maybe it has something to do with all the technical advances going on around us that make this easier to do."

source: Guardian

Paynes grey versus Mars Black

2011-05-22T14:46:00.000+01:00

working on current acrylic painting for signing board featuring at a wedding in Paris in June, its a toss up, usually use Paynes Grey as it is not as harsh as lamp black/mars black, but it may need to contrast more with the blue/purple tones already applied. Thinking out loud in technology:)

Payne's grey is a very dark blue-grey used in painting. It can be used as a mixer in place of black. Being less intense than black, it is easier to get the right shade when using it as a mixer. Payne's grey is a mixture of ultramarine and black or of ultramarine and Sienna.

The colour is named after William Payne, who painted watercolours in the late 18th century.

The colour Payne's Grey is named after a British watercolourist and art lecturer, William Payne (1760--1830), who recommended the mixture to students as a more subtle alternative to a gray mixed from black and white. In Artist's Pigments: c.1600-1835 Payne's grey is stipulated to originally have been "a mixture of lake, raw sienna and indigo."¹

Mars black is supposed to be much more powerful in
tinting strength
About three times the tinting strength of ivory. Not as black as ivory. Hold a magnet up to a tube of grumbacher academy mars black and then hold it next to a tube of Winsor newton artists grade mars black and you can feel the difference in pigment load by the degree of magnetic force involved.
Here a high pigment load can be a negative aspect. Black is one of the most feared pigments. Many have trouble with it and cite the dirtying, muddying nature that it has, yeah, it is black, and sometimes mud is just what you want. So with three times the power, mars can be even harder to handle than ivory. I know some artists who prefer the lower pigment load and tinting strength of winton ivory black. I feel this way about other pigments as well, for instance, I really like winton prussian blue due to the pigment load and my ability to handle it. I won't even try out a tube of Old Holland prussian blue, however, when it comes to other pigments like say yellow ochre, then bring it on because I can handle the highest pigment load there is.

Functionality of Maintenance 1

2011-05-22T13:39:00.000+01:00

Painting

Last time out I was undertaking several pieces, ‘Just three words’ and 100 ways to say bollocks, in fairness it felt a little fake to me, going through some motions of concepts, I felt that I was being true to myself but I reckon I was just kidding myself. I was creatively lost, looking back on it, the work involving writing the word bollocks using one and half inch nails and two inch

nails was the final nail in the coffin. After hours of gluing nail heads onto a board something had to give, in this case I just put it at the back of the studio to gather dust – maybe to return when it felt right, it hasn’t felt right since that decision. Just three little words was just playing, thinking I was being cutting edge, witty, or in fact shoved up my own arse. So what now? Going back to basics, try and find something that I wanted to paint, had a go at looking into my past, the Ladybird book collection that was given to me as a present inspired some ideas based upon my Adidas samba painting,

no matter how I manipulated the images, played around with drawings, layouts and the rest, it didn’t feel right, so yet again in all honesty it was shelved, the result that I had lost my direction, creativity and interest in painting my own ideas.

I still want/need to paint, I’m my most happiest stood/sat in front of a canvas with a paint pallet next to me mixing colours and getting involved with the art of painting.

So what next, who knows, I’m currently undertaking work that has been asked, well, ticking over stuff, it seems that I have been working on wedding stuff, namely signing boards. The first, as a wedding present to my sister in law was a graphite drawing based on their journey together; it was a real challenge as they kept changing their ideas, making the mapping out difficult, but in the end I enjoyed the challenge, trying to make a piece of work that was suitable for the occasion and didn’t veer off to much from my own convictions! Currently, I have been asked, a suggestion from my good lady wife! That I produced a painting for a signing board for a relations wedding in Paris, through some email discussion I have started mapping out a painting, a slightly new approach acrylic on paper – not done it before discovered that with priming part of the paper caused some buckling but hopefully this will go as paint is applied. I will give updates on this as it progresses, the introduction of colour more than the three colours I have used previously is taking me into a new direction, hopefully by undertaking this it might provide me with a new creative direction, its certainly got me thinking more about my work and hopefully it will be the springboard for new work.

Trying to ‘keep my hand in’ over the last year or so, I have set myself a couple of painting challenges, I keep coming back to this word challenges, why is this? What challenges do I want to make in creating art? Do I want to improve my skills, becoming one of the top ten contemporary artists in line with D Hurst, Chapman brothers (previous thoughts about them on blog), it would be nice, but to be honest it aint gonna happen.

One of the reasons for lack of posting/painting on a regular basis will be posted within the ‘functionality of maintenance’ in due course; Pinner Rugby Club, but within the context of this post it is about art and painting I produce (is that the term I want to use?) connected with the rugby club I set up a competition

Competition – seek and thou shalt find

Following previous successful competitions we have introduced another one. On the website there will posted this image

I know there is one on this post but there’s another one somewhere else on the website (very funny quoting this one!) nor is it the one in the ‘pelican brief’ that again is just advertising the competition – I give up!!

The first one to email me where it is on the website will win. The date it will posted will be Sunday 7th March. The prize…… something a little different; a personal graphite drawing 10”x 8” on paper of the winner in action, signed and dated. (personal choice of image and style) there are examples in the latest newsletter found on website as a pdf or a paper copy in the clubhouse

it has now been posted on the website, as of 8.13pm Good luck

things then transpired

The final presentation was made by Paul Talbot who ran a competition on the website to locate a picture of Tommy Cooper wearing his famous fez with the Pinner RFC logo on it. For the first person to find it the prize was a portrait drawing, completed by Paul Talbot, this was extended by the winner’s request; Neill ‘Bullet’ King for a painting, not only of himself but with three of his first team mates

In fairness, the idea of making this painting did give me a buzz, using colour, trying out something different that extended me was great, I didn’t have a time limited, so as with most things it slipped away, the initial ideas, drawings etc got started but put in the recesses of my mind and studio. I have now come to the conclusion that I need to set my time targets, I work under pressure and with this I set myself a date to finish in time for the end of season awards, I finished it unfortunately, the winner did not turn up! Got some great feed back and may pursue this line of painting further, who knows might get a couple of commissions from it (always nice).

Functionality of Maintenance

2011-05-22T13:20:00.001+01:00

Functionality of Maintenance

Having looked briefly at the blog elements of my websites it became apparent that it lacked input of any description over the last year. There have been many reasons for this, one of course is basically burn out; both imaginatively and physically, not just plain lazy! I am aware that I have had a number of people who follow my blogs, in fact I have heard that it has been used as a teaching resource, nice to know there is some value to my rants and oddities!

There are a number of factors which have led me away from posting and I thought I would have a go at explaining a number of them, hopefully they will be honest and at times thought provoking. It will also be a platform for me to start posting regularly again.

I’ve tried to break down some of the main reasons for not posting and came to the conclusion to put them into ‘family’ factors which will allow expansion with related information, images and personal thoughts. These are not meant to be excuses but by going through them I will hopefully be able to resolve many of the constraints I have and more importantly, the desire to post in a creative thinking process. I’m not going to post these thoughts in all one go, too much at one time, but I will get back into the swing of it I’m sure L emoticon number #1 in full use J

The amazing crayon art of Christian Faur

2009-03-02T15:06:00.004Z

Just incredible....

crayola have a lot to answer for!

I thought my work with nails was time consuming - although I had only to worry about one colour (but two sizes!!!)

this work is not only very clever but also beautiful

heres the link to his website: Christian Faur

enjoy and be amazed

straight from the hart

2009-03-02T14:47:00.002Z

following a recent post with the sad news about Tony Hart I came across these (source: guardian)

and thought I must post these as many like minded people still love Tony

Featured work was placed outside the Tate (nearly 200 little morphs!)

current work

2009-02-26T18:55:00.004Z

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)

2009-02-12T12:22:00.003Z

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

2009-02-12T11:51:00.001Z

I reckon we've all hummed this!

2009-02-12T11:38:00.001Z

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

Horsing around

2009-02-12T10:58:00.008Z

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

2009-02-11T23:09:00.000Z

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

2009-02-11T22:34:00.003Z

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...

2009-02-11T21:28:00.007Z

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

2009-02-09T22:23:00.009Z

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

2009-02-09T20:52:00.010Z

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

2009-02-09T20:26:00.006Z

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!

2009-02-08T18:35:00.019Z

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

2009-02-07T21:51:00.001Z

artwork by paul talbot

2009-02-07T21:02:00.003Z

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!

2009-02-07T13:37:00.004Z

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!

2009-02-06T16:55:00.004Z

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!

2009-02-06T16:06:00.010Z

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

a big gap

2009-01-05T22:14:00.002Z

finally sitting in front of a computer with the determination to keep on top of the blog. Looking at my last enteries, which are some time past, I needed a gap time, working on many other ideas, projects and generally experiencing more in life than just sat at a computer!
Of course, having an internet connection that is reliable is helpful and not being able to connect wirelessly from my studio meant that making regular enteries has been difficult; but then again if an effort was made I could have done it - pure laziness? Well, more to the point, I suppose I lost the bug to blog, having spent lot time of time updating blogsites, websites nd general IT stuff I became a little bored. Having just rebuilt one of the websites I run I feel that I am ready to get back on the saddle .........

busy busy

2008-05-12T23:41:00.007+01:00

not been near a computer for a while....

spent five days in Czech republic - with four friends, staying in the country, more to follow

went to a truly fab gig, originally turned down tickets but soooo glad I went - again more detailes to come.. edwin Collins (I'll write my own version but in the meantime here is a taster)

All things considered, he's doing fantastically well. In February 2005, Edwyn Collins was hospitalised with two cerebral haemorrhages. The very worst seemed a very likely possibility but with the help of the finest surgery the NHS could offer, his family and his iron will, he survived.
Two years later, he has a new album - mostly recorded before his hospitalisation - and he's back on stage. So far, so miraculous, but, despite his plainly sincere assertion that "I'm enjoying this gig immensely" and the manner in which he couldn't stop himself laughing like Basil Brush's giggly cousin between songs, I'm not wholly sure whether performing is the ideal way forward for him right now, despite the wishful thinking of a crowd willing him to be further into his recovery than, for the moment, he actually is.
The effects of Collins's condition were plain as he sat before his lectern and sang his 50-minute set, accompanied a band led by former Aztec Camera leader Roddy Frame: he cannot walk unaided and the right side of his body is seemingly partially paralysed.
Although a wretched, ear-splitting sound distorted everything, as Collins smiled his way through his best known Orange Juice songs What Presence?, the deliciously languid Rip It Up and even a punky Blue Boy, his voice was shorn of its pre-illness wry warmth.
There is always hope though and the man who had surprised the medical profession surprised the Arts Theatre shortly before the end when Collins, accompanied only by Frame, unveiled a brand new song (the first written since his return from hospital) provisionally titled Some Sweet Day and, magically, Collins found his voice. When, clear and true, he sang "I've always been lucky in my life ... some sweet day we'll get there", it was as moving as anything I've ever seen. He hasn't beaten his body yet by any means - but he'll get there at his own pace and in his own time.

then the other night.... Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - he was on form.... more to follow

on the home front - rugby season has now finished, sunday mornings are mine again!

here I am looking best and describing the underhand trick of hair pulling!!!!
currently my two laptops are causing me problems and have had to resort to using Jos, nothing of mine is stored on it so at present things are a little thin
hope to be fully upto speed by the weekend

where, why, and then back!!

2008-04-23T22:25:00.002+01:00

doesn't time fly..... yet again a month has passed without me surfacing on the old blogsite.
where: czech republic, at home/busy working/work
why: internet connections down, spending time with family and friends
going to gigs, recently saw Madness at the teenage cancer trust - albert hall, took JJ first gig he 's been to - loved it, great night
involved in rugby club/coaching
visit down to devon
basically, haven't spent much time sat at the computer and needed a break from it - well, refreshed and raring to go, my aim in the next two weeks is to complete nail work, finish portrait (drawing for a chap in czech) and get back to the wonderful world of bloggin g

the good and the bad....

2008-03-20T16:35:00.004Z

Many of you might know that I have links with Zimbabwe, if you didn't basically my uncle lives their, has done for over 20yrs (a great story apart his past may one day be written by myself - starred in the film Cry Freedom as himself, a small featured part), anyhow, thats for another time. I visited Zim last February for a whistlestop tour of schools and some of the sights, again a very long and at times not a nice story. So, I keep an ear to what is happening over there partly to make sure he is safe and follow the news as it happens.

the good:

DOMBORAMWARI Arts Centre in Ruwa is conducting independent studies for artists in various art genres.
Established in 2002, the centre provides resources for resident students in line with their aim to nurture upcoming artists and shape the careers of established ones.
"We want to share the exposure that we have acquired from various prestigious exhibitions that we have participated in to help other artists realise their dreams," said Chenjerai Mutasa, one of the centre's founders.
Mutasa said they came up with the idea of studies as a way of ploughing back to the community, adding that providing an artist-to-artist platform was critical for the development of artists.
"This programme is one way of showing our gratitude to the community which has made us what we are today and we aim to sharpen each other's skills," Mutasa said.
The centre is currently housing 10 artists who specialise in sculpting, painting and ceramic works.
Tendai Dhlamini, a Bulawayo-based artist undertaking the studies, said the programme was of immense benefit to him.

the bad:

Zimbabwe's soaring inflation hit an annual rate of 100,000%, new official figures show.
Ongoing shortages of food and fuel helped drive inflation from December's rate of 66,212%.
Government officials say the shortages make it hard to work out inflation with any degree of accuracy.
About 80% of the country's population lives in poverty and it is estimated that three million people have left the country for a new life in South Africa.
The economy has been in trouble for seven years, with supplies of basic foodstuffs, cooking oil and petrol all running low.
The central bank has introduced new banknotes to cope with the spiralling prices. Last month it issued a 10 million Zimbabwe dollar note

for those sticky moments!

2008-03-20T16:09:00.007Z

Getting back to it now with a new charge of energy after weeks of bid writing and the other stuff.

Came across this new dimension in creating artwork, not up my street (excuse pun!) but clever nonetheless. I don't like the images, then again, working on this scale and on the provided materials, beggars can't be choosers!!

A STREET artist who paints on pieces of discarded chewing gum is back and working in Muswell Hill after a court case against him was dropped. Ben Wilson, 43, a father-of-three, of Colney Hatch Lane, Muswell Hill, specialises in tiny artworks - not much larger than a penny piece.He said of his work: "I try to encourage spontaneity and for there to be more random events. By painting on chewing gum, technically you're bypassing bureaucracy."He added: "It's taking something that's been thrown away, a thoughtless action, and turning it into something more positive."The artist was touching up a collection of works on the corner of the Broadway and Queens Avenue and residents were pleased to see him out and about.

Daniela Jovic, 25, of Hampden Road, said: "My three-year-old is a fan. She gets out her magnifying glass from her bag to see them. She still hasn't spotted these ones.

"Subject requests for the paintings - which can take up to seven hours to create - are taken from the public and he always uses gum already on the pavement."I do a lot of pictures for people that have died in car accidents," he said. "I've been arrested so often for doing dedications to people, but advertisers have a monopoly over public space. Hopefully this redresses the balance."He has worked all round the world in countries including Finland, America and Australia, and used to make impromptu sculptures in woodlands before moving onto gum art.

Mr Wilson was charged last year with resisting arrest near St Paul's Cathedral after he began work on a piece of gum. (source: Hornsey and Crouch End Journal)

Picture artist alphabet - just for fun! K

2008-03-18T23:44:00.000Z

Just in case I don't get time!!!

2008-03-01T22:22:00.002Z

Happy Mothers Day

(got card and present for JJ to give, although I dont' think he will use the card I chose; he spent time today creating a collage card, will post soon)

bbc newsnight review - Banksy

2008-03-01T22:15:00.002Z

caught the end of this, discussion on Banksy, it takes a while to get through total program time 35mins - Banksy discussion appears approx. 29mins!
click for link

Banksy - on show

2008-03-01T21:56:00.001Z

One of Banksy's earliest commercial artworks - complete with Tipp-Ex amendments - is to go on show in one of the largest exhibitions of his art yet seen.
The original drawing was made for the band Onecut in Banksy's native Bristol in 1999/2000. It pre-dates album covers he produced for Blur and other bands.
But time pressures meant the graffiti artist did not follow his usual method of producing a stencil. His original workings on paper include the use of felt tips and correction fluid.
The image, Underground Terror Tactics, goes on display at the Andipa Gallery in Walton Street, Knightsbridge, from Friday to 29 March. Its price tag is £35,000.
Gallery director Acoris Andipa said: "It is believed to be one of Banksy's first commercial works."
His previous projects for Onecut included a stencil that caused a scandal when it was sprayed on the wall of a sex clinic.
Some 60 works can be seen at the exhibition, all tracked down from private owners - many in Bristol.
Titles include Paranoid Pictures, Roadwork Rat and Precision Bombing.
Prices range from £7,500 to £300,000 - higher than the current £288,000 auction record for a Banksy. (source: evening standard)

last but one about nails, I promise!!!!!

2008-02-29T21:29:00.003Z

Picture artist alphabet - just for fun! I

2008-02-29T21:22:00.003Z

okay, I know I missed letter I out, but in conversation with Oz, despite pronunciation differences here's an artist beginning with I.........

Again; back to nails!!

2008-02-29T21:07:00.003Z

Nail quotes

Painting is a nail to which I fasten my ideas. Georges Braque

My name is Kurt Schwitters... I am an artist and I nail my pictures together. Kurt Schwitters

A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit. Desiderius Erasmus

If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail. Abraham Maslow

A nail will come out, but its hole remains. Turkish Proverb

The Joy of the folk law bubble bursting

2008-02-29T20:41:00.006Z

Well, I am the first to admit I can be wrong... during a very interseting discussion in the Angel with Oz last night, the conversation led to the previous posting about album covers; specifically Unknown Pleasures by Joy Division, contrary to common folk law (and maybe teenage rumours), the design by Peter Saville was not as previously thought (particulary by us) as being the heart rate of a man during an orgasm; it was, as Oz mentioned (saw an interview with said Peter Saville previous week) an image taken of a pulsar. Well, after years of thinking we knew what it represented we were to say a little taken aback, who wouldn't be? Thinking you knew a secret that only a few knew, like a cone of silence was fantastic - well that bubble has been burst.

Here's the real definition of the album design by Peter Saville:

The front cover image comes from an edition of the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Astronomy, and was originally drawn with black lines on a white background. [1] It presents exactly 100 successive pulses from the first pulsar discovered, PSR 1919+21 (often referred to in the context of this album by its older name, CP 1919). PSR B1919+21 is a pulsar with a period of 1.337 seconds and a pulse width of 0.04 second. It is notable for being the first radio pulsar ever discovered (in July 1967 by Jocelyn Bell Burnell). Its original designation was CP 1919 and it is also known as PSR J1921+2153. It is located in the constellation of Vulpecula.

Oh well, it was always gonna happen!!!!

The Nails

2008-02-27T23:46:00.000Z

The Nails were a six piece New Wave band that formed in Boulder, Colorado, during the mid 1970s. In Colorado, they were originally named The Ravers, and their roadie, Eric Boucher, later became known as Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys.
The Nails moved to New York and by the late 1970s had established themselves on the club circuit. Hotel for Women, an EP recorded in 1981, contained an early version of "88 Lines About 44 Women", a song that caught the attention of RCA. The Nails were signed to RCA By Bruce Harris, also known for bringing The Clash to America. In 1984 "88 Lines About 44 Women" was re-recorded for RCA and included on The Nails' full-length debut LP, Mood Swing. The song received regular airplay despite a number of double entendres and lyrical references to masturbation and sadomasochism. [1]
Two years later they released Dangerous Dreams, also on RCA. Both Mood Swing and Dangerous Dreams made the Billboard top 200 album chart. But after the release of Dangerous Dreams RCA dropped The Nails. RCA did not release either LP on compact disc. "88 Lines About 44 Women” continued to appear on compilations 20 years after its release and was featured in a Mazda television commercial that aired in the late 1990s.
The Nails were composed of vocalist Marc Campbell, bassist George Kaufman, saxophonist Douglas Guthrie, drummer Mike Ratti (Dennis McDermott on Mood Swing), keyboardist Dave Kaufman, and guitarist Steve O'Rourke.
In 1988, the band reconvened (without Guthrie and Dave Kaufman) to record a third album, Corpus Christi, which wasn't released until 1993 and received little exposure.
In 2007, the band licensed Mood Swing and Dangerous Dreams from RCA parent company Sony-BMG Entertainment and released these albums on compact disc for the first time.

nails, nails, nails, nails

2008-02-27T23:44:00.001Z

It just goes on .......................!!!!!
Types of nails
boat nails
box nails
brads
broom nails
casing nails
common wire nails
common spikes
cooler nails
deformed shank nails
escutcheon nails
finishing nails
joist hanger nails
railroad spikes
ring shank nails
roofing nails
sinkers
spiral shank nails
wire nails
apple-box nails
beer case nails
cleat nails
hinge, latch plate and lock nails
strap nails
berry-box nails
cigar-box nails
date nails
egg case nails
fruit box nails
hoop fasteners
hook head metal lath nail
orange box nails
BLOCNAIL
CLOUT
CLYDE RAIL SPIKE
CUT CLASP
CUT FLOOR BRAD
DECOR
FLAT COUNTERSUNK HEAD
FURNITURE BRAD
HOLDFAST
MOULDER BRAD
PALMHOLDFAST
ROSEHEAD FINE SHANK
ROSEHEAD FLAT POINT
ROSEHEAD SQUARE SHANK

Nails - some interesting facts!

2008-02-27T23:12:00.006Z

As you may be aware one of my current pieces is based on the use of nails; well true to form, I have done a little research about some historical facts about nails, their names over the years and modern equivalents. You may wish to gloss over this post!!! But, when working with mixed media I do like to get involved with the materials I am using.

(source: glasgow steel nail company)

The Penny Nail
This article in 'The Ironmonger' from 1915 tells us the story of the 'penny' nail.
As you can see from the above picture, the details come from the account books of churchwardens and builders in the Middle Ages in England. In this case, the researcher examined the records dated 1477 from the Church of St Mary-at-Hill in the City of London.
Although many different handmade nails were in use at the time which had specific names, a large proportion were named simply by the number of pence paid for a hundred nails.
For example, four penny nails were those of which a hundred were purchased for 4d. (The 'd' stands for pence in the days when sterling was denominated in pounds, shillings and pence - £ s d).
The account records of the Church of St Mary-at-Hill show -
'ffor a c of v peny nayle vd'
The 'c' is the Roman numeral for 'hundred' and 'v' is the Roman numeral for 'five'.
The amount of money paid for a hundred nails - fourpence, fivepence,sixpence - is thought to depend on the size of the nail. The larger the nail, the more expensive it was. The largest nail appears to have been the tenpenny nail, also referred to as the 'fyve stroke nayle' - possibly because it took five strokes of the hammer to get it home.Nails in Stuart Times
Moving on a couple of centuries and we begin to see some of the nail names appearing that we still use today.
This article, again from 'The Ironmonger' this time dated 1924, reports on a young man named Ambrose Crowley who lived in the days of William & Mary. He was a Quaker who was in business as a 'naylor' and by 1682 had set himself up as an ironmonger in Thames Street in London to sell his nails.
Apart from explaining the best size of bags to use for packing the nails to stack them successfully in a pile the document reviewed by the researcher showed the following nail names being used at that time -

Batten Brads
Pound Nailes Long
Plain Brads
Port Nailes
Kings Brads
Patten Rivetts Long
Bill Brads
Horse Nailes Short
Pound Brads
Patten Rivetts Short
Clout Nailes
Rosehead Nailes -
Deck Nailes Sharp
Dogg Nailes Square
Flat Head Nailes
Sheathing Nailes
Flat Pointed ditto Dutch
Flat Pointed Short
Filling Nailes
Tenter Hooks
Weight Nailes
Lyne Hooks ditto Diamond Head
Horse Nailes Long
Weight Nailes for ye King
Lead Nailes
Spikes Copp Head
Pound Nailes Short
Spikes Diamond Head
Spikes for ye King

Handmade nails
In 1946, 'The Ironmonger' tells us under the Trade Chat section of a Mr S R Naish who put together 'a fine private collection of nails made by methods in use before nail-making machinery was invented....which must be by far the most comprehensive of its kind that has ever been compiled'.

Listed below are the types of handmade nails Mr Naish had collected at that stage.

Batten, Fine
Hob, Wrot. Sq.
Boc king(Welsh)
Cider Spike
Hob, Wrot. Patent.
Cider Stub.
Hurdle, 6 in.
Clasp, Fine.
Limer, Stock Head,
Clasp, Fine Wing.
Wrot.
Clasp, 4 in. Wrot.
Mop, Rd.Hd., Large.
Cloth Hook
Mop, Square.
Clout, Best.
Ox.
Clout, Best Strong.
Pig Rings.
Clout, Common Wrot.
Plate.
Clout, Csk.Wrot.
Prison Door, Cast.
Clout, Double Deep Csk.
Prison Door, Wrot.
Roofing Stud, Cast.
Clout, Fine.
Rose, Fine.
Cooper's Flats.
Rose, Flat Wrot.
Cooper's Hook
Rose, Pointed Wrot.
Cooper's Nails, 2 in.
Rose, Pointed.
Crib.
Rose Spike.
Essex Hurdle
Rose Wherry (or Cooler)
Rose, Wrot.
Fencing Spikes, Wrot.
Scupper.
Flemish Tacks.
Scupper, Fine Sq.
Frost, Chisel Head
Sign Hook.
Frost, Snap Head.
Slate, Fine.
Gate, Wrot.
Staples, Wrot.
Horse.
Tenter Hook.
Horse, Csk.
Tiling Hook.
Horse, Half Csk.
Tyre, Cast.
Hob, Wrot. Clasp
Tyre, Wrot.
Hob, Wrot. Clinker.
Tyre Stubs, Wrot.
Hob, Wrot. Fancy Sq
Wrot. tip.

Ah yes, life can only get better!!!!!

nail sizes with prices (US), as an image I like it, using it as a starting point for a graphite and biro sketch

album art

2008-02-26T22:04:00.009Z

In the news at the moment is the sale of the painting - Kerze (candle) by German artist Gerhard Richter used on the album cover by Sonic Youth - 'Daydream Nation' (1988), not an album, which at the time was a major chart success! Its said that the popularity of the image is worldwide - symbol of peace, its probably going to sell for at least £2.5m, maybe more

This got me thinking about my own record collection - most of it in boxes, some lost in time (parties, friends borrowing them etc, currently updating on CD - I know its the day of the i-pod, I do own one and use it all the time!) and which ones stick in my mind as cherished album covers.

I have included a few here for various reasons, some more obvious than others - the immediate shock value of the Pistols; as a very young teenager smuggling it into my bedroom so the parents wouldn't see it!

Ian Dury, just loved the image of him standing there outside the shop with slightly flared trousers (not hip at the time!!), constantly looking in the shop window and setting to memory what was there whilst sat in the lounge with headphones on (so my parents couldn't hear some of the lyrics!!!

Then there is Joy Division, a discovery thanks to Oz, the cover looks at first like a mountain range in contour map formation, but, when you found out what it really represented you felt like you were the holder of a secret and only a few knew, especially not parents!

Another one I have posted is that of Klaus Nomi - I just loved the theatrical element to the black and white image, a strange mix of b/w classics and slightly comical approach (at the time I saw Metropolis for the first time and felt a link between the two - well I was young and impressionable at the time!)

Over time I might droop a few more in, of course, there's nothing like thumbing your way through old albums, which of course does lead you to sitting down and playing them... which can't be bad.

Picture artist alphabet - just for fun! J

2008-02-26T21:27:00.004Z

I know I haven't been upto date with this but all will be resumed!! You may notice that I haven't posted an artist with I as the initial letter - to be frank I couldn't remember one that I like/has influenced me. No doubt, there are one or two and hopefully I can recall them at a later date.

So as a bonus I am including two yes 2 artists just to make up for the lack of 'I'

Both artist work influenced me in my early college days and I have selected works that I remember seeing for the first time and thinking wow, other images are ones that I have chosen because of the mark making/drawing technique. Enjoy

Its that connection thing again

2008-02-26T20:57:00.003Z

Following previous posting about nails and the artist David Shrigley I found an interesting interview by him from the Independent, it follows; I like his earthy honesty and sense of humour - shame about Notts Forest: although I agree with him on his understanding of their skill!

I will tootle over to the Haywood Gallery in the next week or two to have a butchers at his latest exhibition - running 25th Jan to 13th April

Contemporary art borrows the structure of a joke, then takes out the humour – that's what makes it art. In my twisted mind, it makes sense. But pretty much everything Gilbert and George do is funny.
* My aesthetic is a form of shorthand. I made a decision that I wasn't going to draw anything in a more sophisticated fashion than it needed to be.
* My parents are not at all interested in art and never thought I would be an artist.
* Art is not a great career path, as very few people make money from it. Then again, nobody expected to make money from it when I graduated, so it's changed a lot.
* Art can be a bit of a rich kid's thing to study, in the United States particularly.
* There's always good work coming out, there always has been and there always will be. I think it's ridiculous to say there's no good art around. It's true in any discipline. People always say there isn't any good music around, but they're not looking for it in the right place.
* I'm a big consumer of music. Now I've made some money, I really like the fact that I can buy records without having to worry. That's a big luxury in my life. The ironic thing is I get lots of freebies now.
* I tend to put too much emotional energy into following Nottingham Forest, but they're never on TV because they're crap.
* 'The Mighty Boosh' is the best comedy on TV by some distance. It's crazy, but quite sweet and innocent at the same time.
* I'm proud that I do what I enjoy, and I can do it and support my partner. And I don't have to get up dead early in the morning. I can wander around the house in my pyjamas and do drawings. That's quite nice, but I'm not sure if that's an achievement or just a stroke of good fortune. Maybe it's both.

Interview By Luiza Sauma

Hirst - that leaky old touch!

2008-02-26T20:31:00.003Z

(picture doctored by myself for fun!!)

Came across this - it tickled me, even the 'great' have problems with their art!!

Buying a work by Damien Hirst is always going to be a costly exercise. He is, after all, the highest-selling living artist on the planet whose pieces command unprecedented prices. So spare a thought for Oslo's Museum of Modern Art, which was forced to return the artist's installation of a bisected cow and calf for repairs after the tank of formaldehyde they were in sprang a leak.
Just over a year after Hirst's famous shark was found to be suffering from rot, a second pickled piece, the 1995 Turner Prize-winning Mother and Child Divided, had to be sent back to the artist's studio for emergency repairs, The Art Newspaper will report in its October edition. The tank was on display at the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo when the leak was spotted. The work was immediately sent to the artist's studio in London for emergency repairs. It brings into question the longevity of contemporary works of art that are made with unconventional materials. Gunnar Kvaran, the museum's director, said the damage was caused by a flaw in the glass, and some formaldehyde was lost. "Our insurance will probably have to cover the costs of conservation," he added.
Although only one case in the work was found to be damaged in June, all four parts of the installation were sent back to Hirst. The work was the gallery's most popular and will not be returned until next year.
Grete Arbu, head of collections at the museum, said it had been discussing conservation of the work with the artist before the leak was discovered.
"It had been installed permanently in 1997 and it was just getting tired," she said. "The pressure inside the container is enormous. We just noticed a small leak on the floor beneath the glass, and we sent it back within the week.
"Formaldehyde is very dangerous material. The same container will be kept but the layers of glass will be replaced. We could see it needed to be conserved.
"Many of the contemporary artists' works need to be repaired because they work with so many different techniques, so these things can't last a thousand years," she added. The museum is believed to have bought the piece in 1996, for about £135,000 from White Cube Gallery. It has since acquired several other pieces by Hirst. The intricate restoration work is anticipated to be "quite expensive."
A new version of Mother and Child Divided will be lent by Hirst for the Turner Prize retrospective opening next week, which traces past winners in the prize's history. The original was deemed "too fragile to travel" by the Tate, which has used the artwork as a key image in its promotional poster campaign. A spokeswoman for Hirst's company, Science Ltd, confirmed the leak was being repaired.
A statement read: "The 1993 work is undergoing repair as a minor leak has appeared in one of the tank's seams – this is not a major repair job. Damien has made a second version of this piece for the Tate retrospective." Last year, Hirst was to replace the rotting shark in his The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, which was bought by the American collector, Steve Cohen from Charles Saatchi, in a deal brokered by the Gagosian Gallery for a reported £6.5m three years ago. It was found to have deteriorated dramatically since it was unveiled at the Saatchi Gallery in 1992. The chemical solution that surrounded it had become murky and the shark had changed shape. (source:independent)

getting hammered!

2008-02-25T22:55:00.009Z

Isn't it amazing, as soon as you start on a piece of work/idea you start seeing things that are related. Its like when you want to purchase a new car and it appears that every other car on the road is the one that you want - I can't remember the official terminology for this but I bet there is one, rather like there seems to be a phobia about everything. (once did a pub quiz and asked players to match 12 phobias to particular words) ....any how I digress!

I was searching for the now infamous nail painting/sculpture of Leonardo by Saimir Strati

when I happened across some great work by an artist.. David Shrigley

whos use of language combined with his artifacts are brilliant, I had a butchers at his site an loved one piece -

Then came across another sculpture who uses bent nails, in the same manner as Terry Border (bent objects)by pjlighthouse

whos slant is that of a comical approach. Also on the trek came across Bill Secunda who makes huge sculptures using a combination of nails and other materials.

Well, enough time spent trawling, time to get back to the nails!!!

2008-02-25T17:22:00.003Z

Following my interest the the artist Banksy there is more news on his work -

Now you see it, now you don’t . . . and now you do again. A large-scale artwork by Banksy, the “guerrilla” graffiti artist, disappeared last weekend after a rival graffiti artist sprayed white paint over it.
Just as everyone assumed that the original work – painted on the wall of an arts centre two years ago – was beyond saving, it somehow materialised again yesterday.
The stencilled figure of a chambermaid appearing to lift up part of the wall like a curtain to sweep away some dust is protected by both the Roundhouse arts centre, northwest London, on whose wall it is painted, and Camden council, which spends thousands of pounds removing graffiti from its streets.
Whether someone removed the white paint or painted a new version of the Banksy work is unclear.
Banksy, who insists on anonymity, enhanced his reputation in a more conventional way on Thursday night, when one of his works sold at auction at Sotheby’s in New York for a record price. Keep it Spotless, a spray-painted canvas depicting a chambermaid appearing to lift up a Damien Hirst spot painting to reveal a brick wall, was sold for £950,300. A year ago the most that had been paid for a work by Banksy was £102,000. (source:timesonline)

I am aiming to use this stencil style to produce some lettering for a piece of work within current project, having drawn out some sketches and currently experimenting with materials I'm in the process of formulating an image with which it can be combined.

I bet my work wont be in there!!

2008-02-24T18:17:00.002Z

Having had my work on the saatchi online gallery for some time and entering the ongoing voting competition, I very much doubt that my work will feature into this venture!! One can only hope....

Charles Saatchi is to open one of the world's largest private galleries of contemporary art and go into direct competition with Tate Modern.
The new gallery, in King Street, Chelsea, is replacing Saatchi's previous site at County Hall, which closed after the collector breached the terms of the lease.
The new location will feature 15 large rooms spread over three floors and cover 50,000sqft.
The Tate features a huge Turbine Hall and three floors of galleries that run the length of the 200 metre-long building, with a total of 371,350 square feet floor space.
Like the Tate, the Saatchi will be free to visitors when it opens in spring.
It will have longer opening hours than any other British gallery or museum, running from 10am to 10pm most days, thanks to sponsorship from New York-based auction firm Phillips de Pury, which is opening a British European HQ and auction rooms in Victoria later this month.
Saatchi, 64, is planning to launch his gallery with a show featuring his vast collection of contemporary Chinese art.
It will be followed by an exhibition by new US artists and then a show of contemporary Indian art.
The latest purchase by the collector, who has fostered the careers of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, is a painting of Nazi Holocaust mastermind Heinrich Himmler. Saatchi paid a reported £3,000 for the portrait by Jasper Joffe, 32. (source. evening standard)

couldn't help with association!!

2008-02-24T15:19:00.002Z

working with nails couldn't help thinking of the actor/singer who first appeared in Auf Wiedersehen Pet then had a fairly good album with crocodile shoes. Later had own series and hasn't been around for a while............

nailed it!!!

2008-02-24T15:11:00.002Z

small detail of work in progress - its going to take some time I think, but I am working on other things as this progressess!!

a clue to new piece!

2008-02-20T17:58:00.000Z

when life takes over!

2008-02-20T17:26:00.004Z

I know, its been a long time... but with the best will in the world, sometimes life takes you by the scruff of the neck and commands that you spend more time with everyday life! I have been very busy with both work and home life, writing a specialsist bid has meant that most of my working day is spent number crunching (not my kettle of fish or even a pond I would normally dip my toe into!!), writing and then re-drafting, drafting again etc. still not completed - 12th March is deadline day!!! As for the day to day teaching that has gone out of the window - I prepare a days worth of lessons which somebody else delivers - things have to be so explicty laid down that this takes on massive amounts of research, planning and setting out lesson timings (those who teach may have some idea of the implications of this!)
home front - had an outbreak of white spot - a parasistic nasty that kills tropical fish, before we managed to control it we lost over 35 fish - just watching JJ come home and look into any of the tanks and say 'there's another dead one' broke my heart. He lost all of his specialist fish including his favourites - a black ghost knife fish, talking catfish and his clown loaches. After many hours researching, water changes purchasing UV sterilisers etc and four weeks down the road we have managed to to get everything on an even keel. (added to that there was also the cost of another tank - a quarantine tank!!)
Set myself a couple of new challenges - one to lose some weight! going ok at present 1 stone in three weeks, eating and cooking sensibly, also, getting my bike back on the road - ended up purchasing a bike store (another cost both financially and time!), one advantage.... cleared up the back of the studio now have so much space!! Whilst clearing out old stuff came across a load of baby items - brought back fond memories- first shoes, bibs, all in ones etc-didn't throw them away, sealed box marked for JJ in later years!!!
On the art front....... have managed to work ideas in sketchbook and finished off a painting I started some time ago. Started mapping out new piece to go in the 'bollocks' series using nails..... I'll post a clue but me thinks its gonna take some time to complete it, well Rome wasn't built in a day

Picture artist alphabet - just for fun! H

2008-01-22T22:25:00.000Z

hi, I'm back!!!!

2008-01-21T22:18:00.000Z

Wow – what’s that old saying …’time flies when you are having fun’
Well, looking at the date of my last post time has certainly flown past, not to sure about the having fun part.
My recent dash to hospital has take its toll – I still am having a lot of trouble with keeping my balance and standing for long amounts of time is difficult – considering I spend a lot of time standing when painting this has hindered progress. I have been working out lots of new ideas for work and have been gathering materials and resources and researching for the next instalments!
Also, domestic life and work have been recent priorities – currently writing a sports bid for school, off timetable for two months; hoping to complete by early March, up to 30,000 words so far and only quarter way there!!
I have enjoyed relaxing with Jo and JJ – hours of playing Othello and Frustration,

plus the usual things; reading and seeing friends etc
Other developments: JJ for his 7th birthday requested an aquarium rather than a playstation!!
Well, that was over a year ago and now we have 5 tanks, containing freshwater tropical fish. Latest additions are two new tanks – 360 litre and a small nano tank for his greatest desire – puffer fish, well, we now have three Indian dwarf puffers who are basically as cute as fish can be!!! They only grow to under an inch and we have spent hours watching them!

Anyhow, tryin not to spend too much time sat at the computer (not a new years resolution)
But aim to back as often as last year, oh yes, happy new year to you all and hope the stitches came out ok Oz

Blast from the past II

2007-12-20T12:27:00.000Z

again, whilst searching through some old stuff- came across this old photo of me in action, roughly 88/89. Working on an arts project set up by my great mate Oz. as I remember, it was set over the course of a week and a number of artists worked with / on a community piece - Oz will probably correct me!!

Please note the winkle pickers - a must form of footwear (currently considering purchasing another pair - debate: should someone in their 40's wear winkle pickers!!), still have the quiff, although these days somewhat shorter!

Blast from the past

2007-12-20T12:20:00.000Z

Follwing some comments left and past posts I have located an old drawing that I produced in the late 80's. Roughly 20cm x 12 cm, mixed media. The series of work was based on conflict of relationships and a number of large canvases were produced (sadly lost over time!). Some of the influences of the F post maybe be seen and possible Moore, I still like to produce quick studies in this style although looking at my recent paintings this would not appear so! I think of them more as doodles.

Picture artist alphabet - just for fun! G

2007-12-20T12:17:00.000Z

Picture artist alphabet - just for fun! F

2007-12-17T19:49:00.000Z

just three words picture association 2

2007-12-14T21:47:00.000Z

Picture artist alphabet - just for fun! E

2007-12-14T21:42:00.000Z

Eeeeezzzzyyyy!!

just three words picture association 1

2007-12-13T17:44:00.000Z

as I'm working on the series of just three words I thought as I was sketching and writing ideas down I would embark on a picture association. Aim, each day to find an image that reflects the series; these images are not going to be the starting point of my own work but just interludes!

Number 1:

a little obvious to start off with!

Strike three - Damien Hirst!!

2007-12-13T17:31:00.000Z

DAMIEN HIRST DONATES PICKLED COW AND OTHER MAJOR WORK TO TATE
Damien Hirst's cow in formaldehyde is now part of the permanent collection at Tate.

Damien Hirst has donated four major works of art, including his infamous pickled cow, to the Tate collection.
The gift includes an early vitrine, The Acquired Inability to Escape (1991), the sculpture Life Without You (1991), one of the first in Hirst’s series of fly paintings Who is Afraid of the Dark? (2002), and the exhibition copy of Mother and Child Divided (2007) which is on display in Turner Prize: A Retrospective at Tate Britain until January 6 2008.
It is the first phase of a major gift of works from Damien Hirst’s personal collection that he has committed to Tate.
“It means a lot to me to have works in the Tate,” said the 42-year-old artist. “I would have never thought it possible when I was a student. I’ve been in negotiations with the Tate for a few years to make sure they get the right pieces to represent me properly.”
“I think giving works from my collection is a small thing if it means millions of people get to see the work displayed in a great space.”
Works already in the Collection by the artist include the major installation Pharmacy (1992), the shell cabinet piece Forms Without Life (1991), a suite of 13 prints from The Last Supper (1999) and a print from the series London, Untitled (1992).
This latest donation will, according to Tate Director, Nicholas Serota transform the representation of his work in Tate's Collection. “Tate is indebted to international contemporary artists such as Damien Hirst for working with us on building the collection,” he said.

source: Isla Harvey 24hour museum staff

Damien Hirst..... again!

2007-12-13T17:18:00.000Z

STUFFED tea-drinking kittens and smoking and gambling squirrels could land an international auction house in court.
The former owner of a museum of Victorian curiosities is suing the auction house that sold it for turning down a £1 million offer from the artist Damien Hirst.
The collection of more than 6,000 stuffed animals fetched £336,000 when it was sold at auction in 2003.
Now John Watts, who had owned Mr Potter’s Museum of Curiosities for nearly 20 years, is to bring a claim in the High Court against Bonhams for allegedly failing to alert him to an offer from Hirst. He is demanding that Bonhams make up the £572,000 difference between the sale price and the offer from Hirst, who said that he wanted the collection to stay in this country.
The collection was created by Walter Potter, a self-taught taxidermist, and appealed to Victorian sentimentality with its scenes featuring squirrels taking tea and baby rabbits learning the alphabet. For decades it was on display in Sussex but as tastes changed it came to be regarded as macabre and was sold to Mr Watt, who moved it to Jamaica Inn, in Bolventor, Cornwall.
The collection was sold in hundreds of lots, some of which fetched many times their guide price.
Mr Watts said that he had desperately hoped to keep the collection together and was completely unaware of the offer from Hirst. He said: “It was stated in the contract that Bonhams would consider every serious offer from potential clients to acquire the whole collection and keep us informed of such interest. This did not happen.”
An article by Hirst that appeared on the day of the sale claimed that his offer had been turned down because it was made after the deadline had expired. Mr Watts said: “It should have been obvious to Bonhams that this was a serious inquiry. We are bitterly disappointed with the approach and attitude adopted by Bonhams.
“We have tried to discuss this amicably but with no joy. They leave us with no option but to pursue our complaint in the courts.”
In his article, Hirst said that he wanted to “reopen Mr Potter’s, adding my own pieces, perhaps, and even some artwork”, and described how his children were overcome by “a sense of wonderment” when they saw the animals.
He wrote: “I have always wanted a museum like this. But now the collection will go to auction to be sold in separate pieces. I have offered £1 million and to pay for the costs of the auctioneers’ catalogues, just for them to take it off the market and keep the collection intact but apparently the auction has to go ahead. It is a tragedy.”

source: simon de bruxelles timesonline

Damien Hirst to work on Joe Strummer book

2007-12-13T16:57:00.001Z

Joe Strummer's widow has revealed artist Damien Hirst is to co-produce a new book detailing lyrics, drawings and mementoes left by the Clash singer.
Lucinda Mellor says she found a whole room's worth of untouched material at their home, collected by Joe on his many tours, following his untimely death on 23 December 2002.
She now wants the material to form the basis of a book which Joe's friend and celebrated British artist Damien Hirst will also work on, with the prospect of a new album of rareties also being mooted.

"It's not something that's going to be rushed into; it's going to be beautifully done," she tells today's Independent, her first interview with a British newspaper since Strummer's death.
"It'll be like an art book, with photographs, lyrics, drawings, maybe unreleased songs, rarities. It'll have CDs in it, rare Joe stuff – we'll see what we've got."
source: C Taylor gigwise

Picture artist alphabet - just for fun! D

2007-12-13T16:33:00.000Z

I might start putting the name of the artist with the picture!

news from the shed - wince...update

2007-12-13T16:03:00.000Z

Finally, managed to spend some time on a painting that I've been working on. Its taken several transformations along the way, and has in some way reverted back to earlier work; although I don't feel that it has been a backward step - revisiting past ways of working and colours has taken me forward; in more recent paintings I have felt that some element for me has been missing. Going back to under painting and building up layers and creating slight surface textures is something I like to do and in this painting I feel that some of that has returned.

New work in the just three words series will have elements of this and each painting, although basically the same dimensions will develop differently in terms of materials and styles - its a challenge I am looking forward to.

The other series I am undertaking is one which hopefully will let me explore a different way of working, using many different materials - ones which I am not familiar with and in some cases have no skills in eg creating neon lighting! More on this series as it develops.

At present I have not got a title for the painting... one thought was 'not jimi' (as in Hendrix) which came about in a conversation with Oz one evening!

Still thinking.

Picture artist alphabet.. just for fun C

2007-12-12T10:29:00.001Z

Picture artist alphabet - just for fun! B

2007-12-11T23:48:00.000Z

Picture artist alphabet - just for fun!

2007-12-10T00:22:00.000Z

Recently posted this on a forum and its seems popular. Bit of coffee table fun and light relief!

I'm gonna start it off, hopefully will put one up a day and will continue to respond if there are any suggestions. (post through comments and I will upload work by artist). keeps the mind ticking over!

The more the merrier!!!

Hi Ho its off to .... murals!

2007-12-09T22:23:00.000Z

One of the forums that I post on had a link going about mural paintings and I thought I would post some that i have done in the past - roughly eight years ago for my sons bedroom. I see them every day and he has intimated that he would like some changes made!! Inclusion of James Bond, an Aston Martin DB9 and some comic book heroes including Dennis the Menace. If i manage to get time over the holiday period I might have a go.

just three words update... completion

2007-12-09T22:18:00.000Z

Having been unable to spend time painting recently, managed to get back on task and complete the first of this series. Purchased 25 canvasses yesterday and have been priming them in readiness!

Hi Ho Hi Ho Its off to work ......

2007-12-06T16:04:00.000Z

Been back a day or two, very hard getting back into the swing of things, everyone coming up and asking if I'm alright - not quite, but I'll soldier on!!!

First artistic bit of creativity today - help a pupil make the sky in his The Scream transcription represent the printed out version he had in front of him; using oil pastels, spent time showing him how to layer and blend colours to give depth and tone - easy when you know how!!!

Maybe in the next day or so I'll get back to some unfunished paintings of my own

mind the gap

2007-11-30T16:23:00.000Z

Again, not up to doing much except looking around ...

following my visit many weeks ago to the Turbine Hall and seeing 'the crack' as it is now being called on its opening its fun just see what is being written about it some weeks later;

here's some interesting comments:

It was supposed to raise issues of desolation and destitution in contemporary society, a jagged, violent fracture driving through the heart of Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. Yet Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth has become, as Adrian Searle so accurately predicted, entertainment. Known as "the crack" - thanks to that banal knack the media have of nicknaming some of the city's most challenging and experimental works - it has come under scrutiny not for its controversial social and political agenda, but for the issues it raises about the way we view art.So far 17 visitors have apparently suffered minor injuries while inspecting Shibboleth, and it's this that has generated much of the press coverage about the work. Yet it isn't just the general public who are left with bruises: the Tate, the media imply, are either cold-hearted aesthetes - viewing crippled visitors as simply the collateral damage of great art - or irresponsibly naive. I am not going to talk about the apparently inevitable stupidity of some members of the general public (put a hole in the ground and someone will eventually fall into it). Let's just take that as a given. What's interesting here is the problematic approach we have to the art object itself.
Those visiting art institutions expect a certain level of security - by that I mean signs that say 'Don't Touch' and gallery guards. It is an irritating but inevitable part of the gallery-going experience. We often behave in art institutions as we would in a church: in an atmosphere of deference, hushed whispers and silenced mobile phones. It is an atmosphere perpetuated by the institutions themselves and designed to increase the magnitude of the art object - this extraordinary, almost otherworldly act of expression that we are here witness. The Turbine Hall is a different kind of place, teeming with people, information points, telephones and an ATM. There is a vibrancy about the space that generates debate - it's the only place outside the classroom that I have found where my students are not inhibited in expressing their opinions. It is the kind of place where art needs to be, yet rarely is.
Public art is too often confined to places that are relatively inaccessible - on a deserted hilltop, a roundabout, a plinth, or submerged into the general hubbub of city life. The Turbine Hall is unique in being a public space designed specifically for art. Where else could Salcedo create such an installation? And where else could we have such freedom of access?
Enough silly-story carping about injuries: we should celebrate the rare opportunities we have to physically explore a work of art and rack up the sprained ankles to our lack of experience.

source: Guardian arts

THE huge crack in the middle of the Tate Gallery has become a seedy hangout for tiny, drug-abusing Borrowers, the Daily Mash has learned.

Det Sgt Helen Barnes on the look out for Borrower drug gangs

More than a dozen visitors to the central London exhibit have fallen into the crack only to be beaten and robbed by heroin-crazed, three-inch junkies.Known simply as 'The Crack' among the capital's Borrower community, the 580ft long artwork was once a thriving thoroughfare for the miniature people until a visiting art history professor accidentally dropped a small plastic bag filled with cocaine."Very quickly the whole neighbourhood was awash with the stuff and it wasn't long before the dealers and the hardened criminals moved in," said Wayne Hayes, a Borrower outreach worker."It's very dangerous to venture in there after dark. Tiny drive-by shootings are commonplace and every street corner is occupied by gangs of incredibly small prostitutes."Police believe that organised gangs of Borrowers are forcing rich tourists into the crack either by tying their shoelaces together or baiting the widest sections with Brussels paté."Why else would so many of them have fallen in?" said Superintendent Bill McKay. "It's not as if they're all complete morons."

source: the Daily mash

further thoughts on how it was made - a long read but some interesting thoughts, I particular like the final one, each has been done in a different colour to make scan reading easier!!

And the crack is big. It starts as a tiny hairline fissure in the concrete floor, beneath a wastepaper bin (is this significant? Reader, we confess: we do not know) up at the hall's western entrance, gradually widening and deepening as it descends in a crazy zigzag, with branches shooting off here and there, until it disappears under the wall at the other end. At its widest it is maybe 10 inches across; at its deepest it is maybe a three-foot crevasse.
There has, obviously, been a great deal of speculation about the origins of the crack. The artist herself has let it be known that it took her a year to create and five weeks to install, and that bits of it were air-freighted across the Atlantic, but has refused absolutely to reveal her precise method. "What is important is the meaning of the piece; the making of it is not important," she says, adding that the work is "bottomless" and "as deep as humanity".
A spokeswoman for the Tate says firmly that it will never divulge how the piece - the eighth in its annual Unilever series of works commissioned specially for the Turbine Hall - was made. "The artist and Tate are not going into great detail other than to say we opened up the Turbine Hall floor in order to create a cavity," a spokeswoman says. "The work was made with utmost precision according to drawings by the artist, and nothing was accidental."

The press, for its part, reckons "concrete sections were lowered into a trench" (the Daily Telegraph), or that the artist "dug into a 'false' floor sitting on top of the original" (the Times). The Independent speaks of "realistic mouldings" and "visible fabrication".

No one, in short, has the slightest clue. Time to call in the experts.

Graham Merton, managing director of Eaton Gate, a prestige building firm operating at "the top end of the domestic refurbishment market", stands four-square across the fissure and rubs his chin. "What I reckon," he says, "is that they dug some of the old floor out - look, that slab there is definitely different, that's the original floor over there. It needn't have been much, maybe just 20 or 30 centimetres. Then replacement slabs were cast in a workshop somewhere, with the cracks already in them, and laid in situ. And where it gets deep down there, they could actually have dug down into the earth with a mechanical tool, and applied a hard slurry finish. No reason why not. But it's certainly impressive."

Ferhan Azman, an award-winning Turkish-born architect with lots of experience in concrete, kneels to probe the crack's sides. "Isn't it great?" she asks. "It works as art for me. It's about how our physical environment affects us. Look how wary, how destabilised you feel in a building with a great big crack down the middle. Anyway, it looks like they've taken a layer off the top here, and then in-filled with pre-cast pieces. It's not that mysterious. There'd be no problem digging down; with a building like this you could go on for ever without undermining its foundations."

Denis Ryan of TM Ryan & Sons casts the experienced eye of a south London builder over the work. "I'd say," he ventures, "that they've dug quite a narrow but quite a deep trench here, probably not much wider than the crack itself, then dropped in narrow pre-cast vertical slabs, all made off-site, to form the sides. Then you use a levelling compound to disguise the joins and make it look like you've replaced an entire slab of the floor. Whatever they've done, it's clever. They've got three builders here and none of us can really agree on the technique."
They can agree on one thing, though: they would all get sued for it. "This is extremely dangerous," says Merton, who otherwise likes the crack a lot, saying it reminds him of "an earthquake, like a reminder to look after the planet, to remember that everything, even the most massive structures, may be at risk. Art should do that, shouldn't it? Challenge you, make you think." Professionally, however, he warns you could "easily break a leg here. I'd never be allowed to let a building out like this. Heels will go in, ankles will get twisted, lawsuits will follow. Health and safety-wise, it's a disaster."
Ryan concurs, but jokes that if he tells his clients people are now paying good money to see eight-inch-wide cracks in the floor, "soon everyone will be wanting one". It probably is good art, though, he reckons: "It's got everyone talking about it, hasn't it? That's the main thing."
Azman only hopes health and safety do not get their hands on it. "There's been so much removal of commonsense from our lives," she says. "People may say children can fall in, but children could fall into the river outside. You just have to tell them to be careful!"
So I thank our experts and head out into the rain, considerably wiser about the techniques of concrete construction but, it has to be said, still not entirely sure I know just how that crack got there.

Fortunately, at the end of the phone is Mr E.
Mr E is a builder who was working at Tate Modern on another project while Shibboleth was being installed, and although for contractual reasons he does not wish to be further identified, he is very happy to recount what he witnessed. So here's the answer ...
"They dug a dirty great trench about a yard wide and a yard deep," says Mr E, still lost in wonderment. "Then they brought in lorry-load after lorry-load of cement and poured it in, using 10-foot sections of what looked like carved polystyrene moulding to form the sides. Then a whole bunch of people lay down on their stomachs for about a week and finished it off with brushes. Looked bloody uncomfortable, I can tell you. It's about racism?

Can't see it myself, but I'm not much of a one for modern art. It was a pretty good trench, though. And one hell of a lot of cement. Good luck to 'em."

best use of fast food

2007-11-29T14:45:00.000Z

as per usual came across this, there are others like this but heh, the finished piece is good, especially as in our house ketchup is rationed!

from man flu to hospital

2007-11-27T12:37:00.000Z

Life is strange; earlier in a post I as talking about looking after my son who was poorly, we as you might of guessed, I ended up with the flu - much overused word, because the symptoms of flu are a lot more serious than the usual colds we get. So with aching bones, blocked/dripping nose I bundled myself of to bed armed with an assortment of pills, lemsips, honey and lemon drinks, closed the door and prepared myself for a few days lock down!
Lots of fluids later I started feeling chirpier - missed most of what happened over the weekend, Jo took JJ to QPR, they had grandpa over for a meal, did rugby training etc.
Monday morning, not 100% but thought I'd better get back to work - Swedish group over and I am going to be working with them both here and in Sweden, couldn't miss it really.
It at this stage, that I should mention that Jo pushed me into going back!!!
Driving into work was a very weird sensation; everything was a little woozy and every time I looked in the mirror or onto oncoming traffic I felt dizzy - this had been part of the 'flu' that I had suffered.
Anyhow, got into school, parked the car, felt like a crab walking across playground - sideways but forwards at the same time! Got into classroom and stumbled. My technician helped to my seat in my office, next thing; on the floor with someone telling me the ambulance was on the way!!
Ended up in A&E, lying on bed wearing one of those gowns that allows you to expose your bum and strangle you at the same time! 4 hours later, several tests and prodding by student doctors the results came in; I had a viral infection in the base of my brain and inner ears therefore no sense of balance.
As per usual, Jos mobile turned off so when called her school to inform her I was in hospital she replied instantly and collected me (she says sorry for making me go to work when I wasn't ready!)
currently, sitting in bed, popping pills, head spinning, back to square one.......

Imagine BBC

2007-11-21T17:26:00.000Z

following last nights program, I have had a closer look at some of the artists shown. One of these was Boo Ritson - basically the idea of actually painting somebody(rather like a form of body art but more abstracted) then taking a photograph of the person; which is the intended final outcome, appeals to me. A different approach to portrait painting? A gimmick? Who knows, but I like the results, the paintings seem to remove the personality of the individual and develop them into almost bland comic book representations with a twist of Auebach (only my opinion!)

Boo Ritson paints people, but not on canvas or on board – she literally coats people with paint. Presented as photographs, Ritson’s portraits are a double masquerade: her subjects coated in sticky disguise, and the documentary image a surrogate representation of the tangible painterly, sculptural, and performative qualities of work. By using photography Ritson capitalises on the associations of snapshot memory and filmic narrative, with each of her characters playing out readily recognisable stereotypes.
Bathed beneath the gooeyness of common household paint, Ritson’s subjects are transformed into athletes, cowgirls, and slot-jockeys. Highlighting the malleability of identity, Ritson’s impostors are rendered oddly totemic as the dripping contours of their wet ‘skins’ create a statuesque effect that’s equally stoically chiselled and insincerely plastic. Balancing between social masks and suffocating veneers, Ritson’s painted effigies stand as psychological animi; a sentiment epitomised in Godfather, where the eyes of her living model are exposed, giving a jarring humility to his hard man mafioso exterior.
info on artist (source: Saatchi online)

the chapman bros download

2007-11-21T14:34:00.000Z

well as I said, went and downloaded 'money' - not very good piece by either of them. Thought I'd post it up so those who missed it can have a gander and if want, download from here. Still sketching out ideas for its transformation............ looking at it on the site they look crap, not sure if I'll bother

looks mighty fine to me!

2007-11-21T14:29:00.000Z

saw this and immediately thought of my friends Oz and Ian who are at the moment exploring beard growing - each having several months growth and could possibly now find this item of clothing useful. What a hat, three in one - covers head, moustache and beard, excellent idea, look out for Santa this Christmas lads, you might find one in your stocking!!

chapman brothers.... need I say more!

2007-11-21T00:08:00.000Z

tonight on tv - Imagine program on bbc - recorded it, managed to see 5 mins when I popped up from the shed - some great stuff, great art and then they focused on the chapman bros at the Frieze art show - for those new to the blog there are several postings about this during sept/oct.
anyhow, thought I would post link to bbc site where you can download your own chapman bros artwork, closes on Thursday 22nd - I'm gonna do my download in the morning - got some ideas of what I shall do with it!!!!
to download

wince - ongoing progress

2007-11-20T23:56:00.000Z

ummed and arred about colour choice, sat in lounge and looked at Red Indian hanging on wall

I remember the time spent on this painting and it is still one of my favourites. The surface created by underpainting and applying several layers creates great depth (not visible in photo - as per usual!!!). The red used was one I mixed up some time ago, and as usual I store paint in old coffee jars, alas, it had become sticky and unusable. So I spent time mixing up another batch, the aim was to get close, which I managed. I have now applied the first red layer and have made some changes by adding more cadmium red to add a lighter hue/tone, I will see if this has been effective when next layer applied.
again - photo quality is poor......

just three words update... in motion!

2007-11-20T23:46:00.000Z

since last postings managed to get an hour in the studio and go mad with brush and paint, managed to turn around 'grin smile laugh' almost to original starting point, happy with the use of white instead of the dark blue (although photo image looked brown - I am crap at photography, should get Rhysbaker to do the photography thing for me!

couple more layers of white me thinks. Still unsure about red lettering - do I keep red, if so, lighten/keep the same or darken? do I go back to the original white as intended - a lot more work and thinking, further updates tomorrow

three little words

2007-11-19T21:54:00.000Z

Just managed to get on with some painting after day of looking after JJ
Had a re-think about current three little words - 'grin smile laugh' - decided to get back and work the background with white. Standing back, I'm happy with the first layer, it will need a couple more to cover the dark blue last painted. the element that I am really chuffed with is when you look closely you can see the under painting - in certain areas the reds and different blues show through.

Banksy again!! or is it?

2007-11-19T18:47:00.000Z

just found this......

Suspicions have surfaced that underground artist Banksy may have infiltrated a spoof art competition in which the worst offering takes the spoils.

Judges of the Turnip Prize were alerted after unearthing a couple of none-too-subtle clues about one particular entry - it was suspiciously good and it was submitted by a mystery artist going only by the name 'Banksea'.
Under strict competition rules entrants hoping to walk away with the top prize must spend as little time on their "artwork" as possible.
But one of this year's contenders has a suspicious whiff of professionalism about it - and the judging panel are not impressed.
Left outside the home of organiser Trevor Prideaux in Wedmore, Somerset, the piece bears an uncanny resemblance to the work of the Bristol-born graffiti artist, Banksy
It shows a faceless figure holding a rocket launcher and firing a turnip over a pier and a emergency exit sign.
The notoriously secretive artist, who found fame with a series of politically-motivated paintings on city street walls, never confirms or denies if he is responsible for an artwork.
If it is a real Banksy it could be worth tens of thousands of pounds.
And therein lies the problem. The time and effort which has been invested in the artwork makes it a long shot for the coveted competition's top prize.
The Turnip Awards was created nine years ago to poke fun at the "pretentious" Turner prize and celebrates truly appalling art.
The winner of the 'trophy' a turnip nailed through a plank of wood, usually ends up in the hands of the entrant who has spent the least amount of time on it.
Mr Prideaux said he and his fellow judges would have to make a decision on whether to allow Banksea's effort into the competition.
"It does seem to be in Banksy's style and the fact it was left anonymously on my doorstep does add to the possibility that it could well be one of his," he said.
"But we do disqualify those who are perceived to have used too much effort.
"Someone has thought too much about this one and tried too hard. So for that reason it's not likely to win. The odds are very long on it.
"The judges will meet tonight to discuss the matter during the first round of the process."
The Banksea artwork is on display at the New Inn, Wedmore, where it faces stiff competition from a number of awful exhibits crafted by regulars at the pub.
They include Time Flies - a dead fly in an empty jar of thyme; Pay Per View -a blank piece of A4 paper from an artist called Blanksey; and Dog Gawn, which is simply a dog lead and a collar.
The winner will be announced on December 3 at the pub, before an audience of critics.

banal interlude

2007-11-19T17:57:00.000Z

today was a day of nothing. My son JJ picked up a bug over the weekend, must have been bad as he missed rugby training yesterday morning. With Jo running a workshop at school it was left to me to look after him - sufferer of man flu child size!
spent the day crashed out watching a bit of tv, playing assorted boards games, making sure he was taking medicine and eating and drinking (all the things we know what to do, but get telephone calls reminding us!!!). Managed to recharge some my batteries - long and hard week/weekend (Sex Pistols, Archie Bronson outfit, rugby training, painting etc). took some time out to catch up on a bit of light reading - just about to start the 'time travellers wife' - passed onto me by Jo, have a feeling that some Jeeves and Wooster will be coming my way soon (eh Oz!).

So, as I was in that state of 'inbetweeness' I thought I would list the last five light reads, and me being me, thought I'd do it by pictures! so here goes.... not in any order (can't remember!)

Oh bother, lost the John Peel - will get that up soon

previous posting (on website)

2007-11-19T16:57:00.000Z

following the toilet posts!!
nothing to do with toilet humour, but when art takes a pee!!
unusual urinals - more decorative than the ones I usually use and probably everyone else for that matter.

If you fancy spending a penny!! heres the link to where you can purchase them: urinal
Looking at some of them Iam reminded for certain artwork by Georgie O keefe

world toilet day

2007-11-19T16:40:00.000Z

as some might of seen from previous posts, I have an interest in toilets (design) and toilet signs (graphical interest!). This is an actual day, spent a little time looking around and found out its backed by unicef .......

World Toilet Day has been declared to be on the 19th of November each year.

The purpose of having this day is to have people in all countries to take action, increase awareness of toilet user’s right to a better toilet environment, and to demand for it from toilet owners. As such, it is also the toilet user’s duty to contribute towards its also the toilet user’s
duty to contribute towards its maintenance, cleanliness and hygiene. The public marks the day to practice toilet etiquette, the restroom community-at-large celebrates with a new declaration for the forthcoming year.

when art meets TV culture and advertising

2007-11-18T23:28:00.000Z

just popped into the lounge and noticed a new christmas (its only november!!) advert by John lewis

one has to ask the question - did Tim Noble and Sue Webster have any part in this, did they help make it/direct? Or, did some advertising company visit the summer exhibition

I still prefer the orginal artworks by the above mentioned, I wonder how many people look at the advert and can see where it has possibly come from? judging by the comments made on youtube not many.

Here's possibly the influence:

aha, Hirst outdone!!

2007-11-18T22:43:00.000Z

Love his work, and seeing this reminded me of the work by Jim Dine who's work I haven't had a look at for some time, me thinks I shall re -investigate his work

Jeff Koons overtook Damien Hirst to become the world's most expensive living artist at auction when his Hanging Heart sculpture fetched £11.3m at a Sotheby's sale in New York yesterday.
The 9ft-tall sculpture was created in stainless steel and consists of a giant heart, weighing 3,500lbs (1,600kg), suspended from the ceiling by two delicate gilded strands and hovering 16 inches (40cm) from the floor. The sculpture took 10 years to complete and was bought by the United States-based Gagosian Gallery. It is one of five uniquely coloured versions of the work from Koons' Celebration series.
The previous auction record was for Hirst's pill cabinet, Lullaby Spring, which sold for nearly £10m at Sotheby's in June. Hirst's diamond-encrusted skull, entitled For the Love of God, remains the most expensive creation by a living artist. It was sold for £50m in a private sale in August.
Koons, a Pennsylvanian who has gained as much notoriety as adulation for his artwork over the decades, is seen by some to have provided inspiration for the Young British Artists movement of the 1990s.
Gaining prominence in the 1980s, he set up a factory-like studio in the SoHo district of New York and employed more than 30 staff for help in producing his work, in a similar style to Andy Warhol's famous "Factory".
Much like Hirst's work would do a decade later, Koons's early conceptual sculptures shocked and delighted in equal measure, including his large stainless steel blow-ups of toys and a series entitled Banality, which culminated in 1988 with Michael Jackson and Bubbles, a life-size, gold leaf-plated statue of the singer cuddling his pet chimpanzee, which was apparently the world's largest ceramic. It sold in 1991 for $5.6m, tripling Koons's previous sale record. This technique for enlarging mundane objects has also emerged in aspects of Hirst's work, including Hymn, an 18ft version of a 14-inch anatomical toy.
Cheyenne Westphal, the chair of contemporary art of Sotheby's in Europe, said it was clear that Hirst was an admirer of Koons' work. In an exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, which showcased highlights from Hirst's own art collection, there were several pieces by Koons. "If you look at Koons' early work, such as his Hoovers and tanks, there is a direct correlation between this and Damien Hirst's work with formaldehyde. There's a very strong affinity between the two artists," she said.
In an era when artists were not regarded as "stars", Koons went to great lengths to cultivate his public persona by employing an image consultant and placing advertisements in international art magazines featuring photographs of himself surrounded by the trappings of success.
During personal appearances and interviews, Koons began referring to himself in the third person. His personal life continued to create controversy when he married the Hungarian-born porn star Ilona Staller and worked on Made in Heaven, a series of paintings, photographs and sculptures that portrayed the couple in explicit sexual positions.
His work has been bought by galleries and collectors around the world as well as Hollywood celebrities. His sculpture of a West Highland terrier is displayed outside the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, and other works have been bought by the Guggenheim in Bilbao.
At the same sale, Francis Bacon's painting Second Version of Study for Bullfight No. 1, which he completed at the Royal College of Art in London in 1969, sold for £22.1m, more than £5m higher than its estimate, and his Self Portrait, painted when he was 60, sold for a £16m, more than double its estimated value. The total value of the sale was £152m.

source: Independent Arifa Akbar, Arts Correspondent

Taking stock

2007-11-18T21:52:00.000Z

Able to spend some hours in the studio today - roughly nine hours non stop (apart from cups of coffee). Looking around, apart from the usual mess, there were several unfinished works. I'm getting keyed up for the next series of works... just three words and 100 ways to artfully say bollocks. I decided to work on these and hopefully finish them, clearing the way so to speak. One of the 'unfinished' pieces ' wince' has sat around for a few weeks, after the initial sketch and mapping out. I had worked out the colours - a very pale blue grey with a strong cadmium red overlay. also, at the same time, I sat looking at the initial just three words painting and as usual decided to work on that instead.. when will I learn!

Recently, some of the paintings, although successful, I feel I have been missing a certain feeling, one which I haven't captured for a while. Well, sitting and sitting, getting up and walking around can get your brain working, out with a pencil and started scribbling on the wall - came up with it; I like to layer the surface, putting undercoats of paint which show through in the final outcomes, this was it, I went back to the painting. I originally thought that the background would be white, but after working today, I'm not sure. Then again, I've just had a butchers and not too happy with current state. (the blue doesn't come out on the photo!!)

'Wince' on the other hand is going well, using a colour base I used some time ago, made some changes to the mix more cadmium to sharpen it.

Bad light prevents photographing next stage - the blue is a base layer. Further images to be posted.

Anarchy in the UK - 2007 style!

2007-11-15T19:04:00.000Z

Be aware - John Lydon on form on this video taken with my phone - some swearing and the usual lyrics!!

As I posted last night, the gig was brilliant, being a little to young to see them live it was great to see them last night. Quote "It's like seeing Elvis; for us" (thanks Oz)

They kept the crowd waiting, came on at 9.30 - what an entrance, they walked through the doors behind the stage (usually used for loading/unloading equipment) to a blaze of white light, casting shadows across the venue.

Swaggering on stage in front, bottle in hand and snarl on face John Lydon greeted the throng - 'hello, I'm a fat f***ing c*** ( I know I swear in my work, but .......) what a way to start.

Then the music - I remember buying the never mind album when it came out, I listened to it in my bedroom wearing a pair of headphones so the parents couldn't hear it, unbeknown to me, dad had heard it already - some one at work brought it in!!!!

The sound was fantastic, they even sounded professional - is that correct for the punk band?!

Song after song brought back memories, singing along or shouting out with angry undertones!

Even when I needed the loo, I held out as much as possible as not to miss a thing, but Guinness after Guinness, bitter after lager - it has to be released! Could still hear them in the toilets - apt really.

They ended on a high, coming back to do an encore - how nice, totally against '76 values!!

Anarchy in the UK shouted out by 50 somethings - reliving their youth, burdened with a mortgage, 9-5 job, families, responsibilities - the anarchists of yesteryear, joined the rest 2007!!!

Outside, whilst waiting for others I over heard a brilliant conversation between 5/6 men (in late 40's/early 50's) ....

quote "that was 'mazing, fancy going to back to mine and having a wild party.....

"yeah, could do with getting rat faced"

"yeah, we'll go back to mine, I'll open up a great bottle of wine.... and I've got some fine cheese"

These 'former punks' were serious!!!

Great night, I've seen the legendary Sex Pistols and seen how all the late '70's anarchist punks have stayed true to their beliefs!!

Off to see Archie Bronson Outfit on Friday - they've got a lot to live upto!

Sex Pistols

2007-11-15T01:24:00.000Z

just got in ..... bloody tube system (save rant for another post!!)
Best gig I've been to - F***ing brilliant, will post full review and videos/pics soon
John Lydon - mesmerising

wow, a week already!

2007-11-14T16:26:00.000Z

Looking at previous posts I realised that I have not written anything for a week, rest assured, I haven't been slack, just getting on with lots of different things... some painting, sketching out ideas, formulating projects, training rugby (and things connected with the club!), socialising, and even mundane items as paper work for school!!!
Also, someone is interested in purchasing a painting, awaiting feedback on that at moment

'beachcombers' acrylic on canvas
Completed and removed masking tape from 'all day..' painting. Taken some dodgy photos of it - light is vey poor at the moment with it starting to turn dark by 4.30 pm

detail

Fairly pleased with result; as its part of a series of 6 it should stand up well with the other 5 (as soon as I have finished them!!)

Update on 'just three words' series - after posting image last time I have made some headway - although the classic one step forward, two steps back is working its ugly head. Originally, the background was going to be titanium white, when I was about to start I had a change of heart - opted for a sky blue/baby blue, painted it then as you can image, not happy. Out came the sketch book/wall and starting mixing colours. I have reworked the background with a deep mix of crimson with purples, blues and applied this. It kinda works, but I think i shall return to the original white, as I like to create a surface layer or two there's no real harm done! (image at some time!)

Whilst posting on an artforum, a question was raised about where people paint-my reply was of course in my shed. This apparently is quite common and several postings have been made in response and with pics to. Further posts included how they like to work in their sheds and what they use as tools/equipment - some were very impressive and some were very neat and tidy!!
Then a question about sketchbooks - I have always had difficulty using them, I prefer to work things out on the work itself or scraps of paper/wood/anything close at hand. I have found myself working more in terms of working out titles, colours and thoughts on the walls of my 'shed', and was requested to upload some on the said forum, haven't done so far but I might.
Thought I'd put some up here, excuse the handwriting - left handed and I use a word processor more than a pen!!

Oh, by the way .................... off to see the Sex Pistols tonight at Brixton Academy - a little too young first time around!! But managed at some some time to see most of the other bands of that era. give you a review later!!!!!

three little words update I

2007-11-07T21:49:00.000Z

as previously posted, started a new series of work based on three little words (influence of the Humament - Tom Phillips). Still undecided about background colour, off to have a think...

all day I dream about .... update V

2007-11-07T21:43:00.001Z

terrible lighting has meant I need to take the photos again, but here's the written aspect (close up)

for those that know me - just up my street!

2007-11-07T20:48:00.000Z

Title: tongue twister. graphite on paper

If you have had the opportunity to see some of my earlier work you we know that I like to use expletives!!
Came across this on my inderweb travels.. shame its over the water, maybe the will transport over to the UK!

I have edited the words for tender eyes!

THE SWEARING FESTIVAL II
back to swear one
Saturday November 10, 2007
main event $12
panel event $5
TICKETS ON SALE HERE
*******
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 10, 3pm, $5 door (no presale of tix for Panel)
Experts discuss HOW THE S***S AND F***S CHANGE THE WORLD
Linguist Dr. Jonathan Hunt
Author and Litquake founder Jack Boulware
********
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 10, 8pm, $12 door
The Mass Swearing Experiment - A multi-media exposure of us and our mouths.
*
A Most Horrible, Vile Oaths contest - Where you get to offload on your personal targets.

The Verbal Abuse Duel - Curse off against a total stranger, but can you take the heat yourself?

LIVE MUSIC from Les Merdes - Sing along to the s**t parade
*
Filthy, foreign tongues – Foreign guests educate us on How to cuss your stale croissant? And how to tell the Spanish train conductor, Why don’t you get some f*****g toilet paper on these trains? Other bad languages to feature too.
*
Swear Into the Light - Curse torture, sponsored by The Dick Cheney Ideas Group
*
The Shite Discotheque Party
*
And loads more wrongness....
*
Raffle Prizes
*
Special Guests
The Swearing Festival explodes it all.

SWEARING

72% of men and 58% of women swear in public.
Swearing takes up 13% of adult conversation
Spock swore in Star Trek 4
One South Park episode used the same expletive 146 times.

nicked idea!!

2007-11-07T18:52:00.000Z

Saw this being used on another site - a big thanks to Jafa and thought I would have a go at putting it up, changes the look of the blog and gives a chance to view some of my work!!

further looking!

2007-11-07T15:12:00.000Z

following links that I scan usually delve a little deeper if it catches my eye - not to sure about having this sculpture in my living room but after seeing other work I like the use of mixed media and the technques used in their creation

by Rune Olsen

again delving that bit deeper, came across the original

in the trusted words of Rolf Harris "do you know what it is yet?"
Tako to ama
is an erotic woodcut of the ukiyo-e genre made around 1820 by the Japanese artist Hokusai. Perhaps the first instance of tentacle eroticism, it depicts a woman entwined sexually with a pair of octopuses, the smaller of which kisses her while the larger one performs cunnilingus. Hokusai created The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife during the the Edo period in when Shinto was making a resurgence; this influenced the piece's animism and playful attitude towards sexuality. It is a celebrated example of shunga and has been reworked by a number of artists. Similar themes of human females having sexual intercourse with sea life have been displayed since the 17th century in Japanese netsuke, small carved sculptures only a few inches in height and often extremely elaborate.

as mentioed, had a look at some of the more recent work, this I like

Thickskinned 2006 Graphite, masking tape, blue mannequin eyes, newspaper, steel, wire and acrylic medium 33" x 27" x 46"

not too sure about this

2007-11-07T14:06:00.000Z

During my usual trails around the inderwed I happened across this artist. Took a closer look at what he was doing and on the surface looks like a great idea - mass art for the masses (update on Warhol I suppose). Then I went to the website to have a closer look at the work he actually produces.. to be honest the words that spring to mind are: quality? workmanship? I understand the concept, but I find the work produced is only worthy of the few quid he charges. Does it undermine the value of the work of others artists, who strive to produce work which shows integrity and a passion to create an artifact of personal value?

Roanoke College resident artist Steve Keene brings an assembly-line mentality to his work -- and passes the savings on to his customers.
New York artist Steve Keene, who has set up a studio in Olin Gallery at Roanoke College’s Olin Hall, creates dozens of paintings simultaneously, which he sells for $1 to $5. Keene says art should be available to everyone.
Keene has created album art, video sets, stage sets and posters for the likes of the Dave Matthews Band.
Steve Keene is painting at Roanoke College's Olin Gallery until Nov. 10, and since he arrived Oct. 26, he has painted more than 500 paintings.
Think real people can't afford real art?
People weren't just buying Keene's paintings. They were buying them by the fistful, by the armload. Broke young twentysomethings, college students, even a 6-year-old named Judah were snatching up paintings by the real, full-time professional New York artist (and sometimes dropping them, too). Other artists were buying Keene's paintings, as well. Artist Suzun Hughes of Roanoke had a stack of them in hand and was looking for more.
Why?
"It's fun," Hughes said.
It's also cheap. How cheap? Let's put it this way: If you're one of those people who hangs posters on walls instead of paintings because the posters only cost $10, it might be time to give Keene a try. His paintings cost $5. And those are the big ones.
The little ones are a buck.
"Anybody can have one," said Keene, resident artist at Roanoke College through Saturday. (His work will be on exhibit at Olin Gallery at the college for a week longer.)

How does he do it? Think Henry Ford, whose assembly lines brought automobile prices within reach of the common man. Keene is a one-man assembly line. He doesn't paint a picture a month, or a week or an hour. He paints 10 an hour, up to a hundred a day -- day after day.
"I really don't think of these as paintings," he explained, while taking a short break last week. "I think of it as a big sculpture that people are walking in. It's like Hansel and Gretel. You see a gingerbread house, and you take a piece of candy with you."

Fair enough. Walking into the gallery where Keene has set up shop is a little like stepping into a candy jar. Keene's paintings -- there are hundreds, maybe thousands -- are lined up on two long wooden racks that span the gallery. More paintings are propped against the walls. On opening night, adults and students and a few very small children circled Keene's wares at speeds ranging from contemplative to breakneck, sometimes pausing to pluck down paintings from the racks, as Motown music blared from loudspeakers overhead.
Meanwhile, between the racks, in a space marked off by yellow tape (the kind of tape you see at crime scenes that says, "Police line -- do not cross"), Keene worked. Keene paints on pieces of thin plyboard cut into rectangular shapes. On this night there were about 80 of them sitting side by side. Keene moved among them with his brush, making a slash here, a dab there, while half a dozen people sat outside the tape and watched.
Keene did not talk to them. Asked later what people were saying about his show, he said he didn't know.
"I don't interact," said Keene, who puts in 12-hour days painting. "I don't want to talk to people when I'm working."
200,000 sales and counting
Keene was educated at Virginia Commonwealth and Yale universities. Now a married father of two who lives in Brooklyn, he met gallery director Talia Logan when both were living in Charlottesville in the 1990s. Logan quickly became a fan. She estimates she has purchased more than 40 of Keene's paintings (an outlay for art that falls somewhere between the price of an iPod and a new pair of shoes). "They're addictive," Logan said.
According to Keene's Web site, his unusual approach to painting began to develop in the early '90s, when he was friends with many musicians and worked for a while as a disc jockey. Keene has created album art, video sets, stage sets and posters for the likes of the Dave Matthews Band, Soul Coughing and the Silver Jews. His painting borrows a lot from music, in fact, especially the improvisational kinds. Keene, who often literally moves into the gallery where his work is being shown and paints on site, considers his work performance art, and says people who buy his paintings (on the honor system -- there are payment boxes set up around the gallery) are "buying a slice of my time."
Keene has sold a lot of slices. He has done his art act in Philadelphia; Houston; Cologne, Germany; Los Angeles; Melbourne, Australia; London; and Florida, and estimates he has sold 200,000 paintings over the past 15 years.
What does he paint?
Anything and everything. Here are some of labels that appear on his pictures in hastily painted letters: "Hotel Roanoke," "Gertrude Stein," "Purple Rain," "Richmond," "Norfolk," "Virginia Beach," "Baseball," "October," "Rain in Salem" and "Sam's Club." There are pictures of the Beatles and Brooklyn and Athens and lots of flowers.
"Junk," Keene calls them, and "absolute nonsense." The point is to gather up objects, he said, in the spirit of Robert Rauschenberg -- who made art from dead animals and bathtubs, among other things -- and assemble them into a collage.
But one man's junk is another man's treasure. Or woman's. And whatever the reason, most of those buying up gobs of paintings at Keene's paintings at his reception were female.
"I just like his whole philosophy about art," said Julie Bivins, a Radford University graduate student whose husband works at Roanoke College. She had come to Olin Hall with friend Denise Valente, a respiratory therapist, and had a stack of dollar-priced "maybe's" in her hands. "I chose this one just for the colors in it. Our walls are kind of bare." Bivins was also eying one titled "Breakfast," with a dashed-off plate of bacon and eggs.
"I like the way a lot of them are funny," Valente said.
And Keene's prices? "Ridiculous and funny," Valente said.
Logan's take on Keene's art was a little different.
"It's absolutely inspiring," the gallery director said.

all day I dream about.. update IV

2007-11-07T13:40:00.002Z

Spent a little time last night on the lettering on the painting - now third layer has been applied - being basically a cadmium red base it really contrasts well with the lime background - in fact it makes my eyes go funny (an effect I was hoping to achieve!)
will post image later today - light permitting
other work currently on the go - just three words series - applied second layer of blue, thinking about the background; maybe opt for a white with a hint of colour, or just zinc white, have to a have a think and play.