Hello! Sorry to say but this blog is not updated any more - if you're interested in keeping up with my work please see below. And thank you for visiting!
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It's been an age since I updated the blog, frankly I think the verbose blogging age is over. Certainly most of my own information is digested in 140 characters. But in any case, I thought that since a show has been rapidly approaching I ought to do something to promote it through here.
This show has been difficult in many ways, i've moved studio and home *again*. Usually I would take a few months off working to prepare but due to the tremendous amount of design work coming in I haven't been able to do that.
Part of new studio space
But there's no time for complaining, and strict parameters can be good for working. It's often the case that tight conditions make for good work, or at least just work which is - the job at hand.
Fimo Maquette and sketch for a new piece
On that note i've been reading a great book called The war of Art. It's a bit like the Artists Way in digested form. There's no tasks to do, you simply read it and take some inspiration from its wisdom. It talks a lot about resistance - resistance to doing the thing which is rewarding in the long term but seems insurmountable in the short term. Resistance to sitting down each day and completing a few inches of a large piece of paper. Resistance it claims is born out of love for the thing, and fear of failure. The greater the love, the greater the fear. I was reading it actually as another form of procrastination - isn't life funny.
Fimo Maquette for a new piece of work
In any case, the show opens June 1st at Los Angeles Thinkspace Gallery. I should have a fair few new pieces there, and if you're in the area I hope you'll pop along as there is plenty of good things to see, i'm showing alongside new work by Frank Gonzales and Jeremy Hush. Frank paints very tight, very modern and bold portraits of birds, and Jeremy uses ballpoint pen to render the scenes of his own personal mythologies.
Some photos from the Roq La Rue show, provided by the lovely Handiedan (I'd neglected to put my memory card into my camera)
With artist Casey Weldon (He is actually much taller than this)
With lovely CouchSurfing folks Cheryl and Genevieve
With a big monkey
With friends Marc and Orla from San Francisco
It's fair to say - it was a riot.
My neglect of this blog has reached an entirely apathetic point. It seems like blogs are just too wordy these days for folk to bother reading them? In any case, i'm presently holed up in Seattle, USA in a nice set of digs courtesy of Couchsurfing. I would highly recommend the couchsurfing experience as it's been a pleasure to stay with these trusting strangers (now friends) of the internet.
My digs in Seattle
So, the reason i'm here is the Roq La Rue show, i'm showing alongside the excellent and lovely Hanneke Treffers (Handiedan).
Tonight's the big opening and i'm looking forward to enjoying the product of my labours with a glass of wine and a DJ and freinds from across America. If you're in Seattle, please do come along, it opens at 6pm and runs on till 9.
If you want to have a look at the preview for the show it's here. I have the biggest piece i've ever made in the show.
Gifts from the Red Barbarians
Just back from the framers
That's all from me for now, until the next sporadic update!
I'm closseted away painting through inclement weather. It's snowed, it's gusted, it's rained, felting has come away from the roof, the shed door has battered itself to smithereens.
The above was a piece for Lush Life 3 at Roq La Rue Gallery, Seattle. Lush Life is a group showing which has (as it's title implies) been running for 3 years, and I have followed it avidly - it has shown some of my most favourite painters alive today. Some of the works from the show are featured below:
Madeline Von Foerster
" Ny Alantsika (Our Forests) "
Christopher Conn Askew
" Samazagh "
Christian Van Minnen
" Always "
Josh Keyes
"Exodus I"
I'm very pleased to say that my next show will be a 2-person at the same gallery in April. I'll be travelling over there to visit that rainy?, grunge-music-making, coffee loving city. I know - i'm terribly stereotyping the place, but i've heard it's a great city.
So, for that reason I must go back and keep painting, these beasts won't make themselves. Will they?
I'm afraid to say that my neglect of this blog has led me to the point where the only post I can write is a random and shambolic affair.
The first thing is that i'm moving my home and studio further north, for this reason my shops are closed and painting has ceased temporarily. Not that much further north, but all the same it'll be colder and wetter. Yay?
The second thing is that if you are at all interested in what i've got to say about painting and all that, Coates and Scarry have kindly interviewed me for their blog.
And thirdly my exhibition schedule has been updated here. The main showing is in April at Roq La Rue in Seattle, USA. I'm pretty excited about that one, and also desperate to settle in and do some work for it.
Anyway, all for now
Hi all, i'm still over in America - San Francisco to be precise, taying with some very good hosts who've done everything possible to make us feel welcome and show us the sights and sounds of this wonderful city.
Taoist/Buddhist temple on Washington Blvd, SF
Making very tentative inroads to conversation with the very nice Chinese custodian of the temple. In the end we settled on him giving us sweet cakes and us smiling a great deal.
The show went as well as it possibly could - The crowd that came were great and I made some freinds into the bargain. All of the pieces from the show can be seen here. There are several in there which you may well not have seen before.
The photo above was taken at the show by a young chap called Joe Orenlas with the most unusual polaroid camera i've ever seen. It was used to take passport photos and came out like this (2 side-by-side). By all accounts he waited 2 years to find this camera at the right price. I'm told he has a flickr account somewhere with many photos of artists and other things of interest in LA but i've yet to find it?
I've done everything a good tourist does except go to Alcatra...Terrible isn't it? But ultimately we decided the big day out would be redwoods and wine country rather than decommissioned prison. And i'm happy with that :)
All for now, hope everyone is well.
Just a wee update on life the universe and everything
I leave for LA and then San Francisco tomorrow night. I'm nervous and excited by the prospect of flying such a long distance. If you live in LA or nearby and would like to come to the opening of the show then please do! I shall be very grateful to see freindly faces.
Thinkspace Art Gallery
6009 Washington Blvd.
Culver City, CA 90232
Opening Reception : Sat September 10th 5-8PM
Foreign Medicine
One might assume that after all this i'd be relaxing for a bit but I have to get right back on it. It seems like autumn is a time for a lot of Art Fairs? I will be showing some hand-tinted etchings at the following places:
Blooom Creative Industries Art Show
Oct 29 - Nov 1
Staatenhaus am rheinpark, Cologne
http://www.blooom.de/
Affordable Art Fair, Battersea Park, London
20-23rd October
Fine Grime Gallery, Stand L7
All for now - I'll see you all on the other side! X
I realised recently after a long hiatus away from any computer other than my laptop that all of my images have been coming out super-dark. My laptop appears to have the lightest screen rendering available.
With that in mind i'm now furiously trying to edit images so that they work well on both my laptop and on other screens. For example the below image has been lightened since my previous posting - it appears it's the mid-tones which suffer the most - it looks pale on my laptop but normal on other screens..
It's all a bit annoying but there you have it. I really need to get the laptop beside another computer and try to find some kind of compromise.
Anyway, here's a new piece I can show - I put it everywhere else (Twitter, Facebook etc) but seemingly not here!