Here’s a photo of my painting Autumn Show, on the wall in Llanover Hall, Cardiff for their 50th anniversary exhibition .
Available to purchase at the special price of £450 until July 26th 2019
Autumn Show – 2016 – acrylic on canvas – 1200mm x 1000mm
and here’s a very different painting on the same size canvas – who is it hiding behind the tele?
Namaste – 2018 – acrylic on canvas – 1200mm x 1000mm
Me and some of my mates
Don’t ask . . . . . .
Here’s some sort-of abstract works instead
bit of doodling mindlessly using Microsoft Paint
At the end of the day
detangle me
You used to think you were especially gifted at school – this is because in your immediate circle of family and friends you were tagged as the brightest and cleverest. It was never true, but you suppose you were usually just about quick enough to figure out almost anything, and if you couldn’t figure it out, you’d put it in a box marked ‘later’ – it wasn’t that you couldn’t solve it, it just wasn’t the right time.
You can’t remember how many of those ‘later’ issues you revisited and solved, or how many sunk to the dark bottom of that box and are still there now, silting up the foundations of your being. You’ve never found life easy but it thrills you to be alive. It scares you silly too.
And so, you see, you have as much right as any one of those greats to tell your story in your way. You won’t promise an easy read, and you may not like many of the characters that feature, or many of the characteristics displayed by our man in the middle – the main protagonist – you!
The only thing you will guarantee is that this will only be about the truth. It will be completely true. You guarantee that.
It was a dampish, coldish, Saturday in October when it all began – this looking back, and the looking forward, and the imagination. The imaginary man.
Yes, The Imaginary Man – that’s you, that’s who you are. You are the original imaginary man. If someone said to you: who are you? You’d probably shrug. But if instead they asked you a series of questions such as: ‘how old are you?’, ‘what is your name?’, ‘are you male or female?’, that sort of thing, then you would already know the answers, and from those answers it could easily be deduced that you identify as a man, born in the middle of the twentieth century, now living in the twenty-first and so on.
So, you do have an identity – a strong identity, the only identity you have ever known and probably will ever know. So, get this – you are fucking important. You are as important as the fucking Queen. You are as important as the Pope, the fucking Pope. You’re not sure about people like the Buddha, or Jesus, or Muhammad, or Guru Nanak, or Krishna, or any other ancient or current inspiration for a religion – or some spiritual leader with a direct connection to the idea of God – like a conduit to the eternal love. No, You’re not sure about them; they may not even be or have been human beings in the same way as the rest of us, they may be or have been like angels or messiahs or prophets or something that operate on a different plane than human existence.
But you’re just as fucking important as any of your other ponces or plebs, and of course to yourself, you are the most important. Though you don’t need anyone else to put you down; you’re an expert at putting your-fucking-self down.
The only reason you’re writing this by the way is to draw a line between that old sucker you and to kickstart the new wiser tougher you.
So where do you begin?
(Interjection on Wednesday November 18th 2015 – as I’m typing this into a Word document ready to be copied into the book that this will end up in. The interjection is this – is it possible that an intelligent person could practise a skill – say, like writing, for decades, and write countless words until they have accumulated at least 6 medium cardboard boxes full of their scribbles plus gigabytes of hard drive space, is it possible for that person to be a crap writer – I mean if you practised all the those years and still didn’t get even the tiniest bit of appreciation and recognition for your work – is that the time to just say “Fuck it – I’m a crap writer – give it up, find something you’re good at.” And what if I won’t accept that, because I have to write – I have to write – there is no choice for me – appreciated or not – so then my voice, however much it doesn’t fit with what is regarded as a good voice is, as good as, as important as, as interesting as, as honest as any other voice of any other human being, whether expressed in words or visual art or, god forbid – dance. End of interjection.)
Completed on the cusp of 2018 and 2019. (‘Scuse the faint shadows on the photos)
All are 16″ x 12″ Acrylic on canvas – all are framed – prices below
Mozaic-A
Mozaic-B
Earth and Sky
Oranges and Lemons
All 4 paintings are framed and ready for sale
Mozaic A & B = £160
Oranges & Lemons = £150
Earth & Sky = £120
* Prices are for collection by arrangement
If you want them delivered then please ask
Last Saturday, December 8th 2018, along with Dafydd Wyn Roberts, I held an event at the Apothecary in Cardiff. They have a lovely little caff at the back of their shop.
Dafydd played 4 songs accompanying himself on an acoustic guitar, and I read three excerpts from my novels.
It went like this – Song-Reading-Song-Reading-Song-Reading-Song or something like that.
Before, during, and at the end of the song-reading cycle we chatted to each other and to the audience.
It was a great night and everyone who was there loved it. Dafydd’s act was excellent, good songs well sung and played. We may do it again – watch this space (well not this space, but some other space)
here’s the poster for the event again
Paint Art
Let’s get the fucking paper the right way round. Let’s get the correct pen. Let’s get the fag rolled, the ashtray emptied, the fag lit and then let us begin. This is an exercise in creative writing, no, that’s Creative Writing, with two great big fucking capital letters, one at the beginning of each word to signify they represent more than the expression they convey. This is an exercise in Creative Writing.
The first rule of Creative Writing, they say, is to write about what you know, your own reality (ies?). So then it’s not exactly Fiction (another word with a capital first letter, watch out for these, and italics, and underlined, and bold – they mean that you’re not being creative enough), but it’s not exactly fact either (should Fact be capitalised?). You’ve heard of poetic (or artistic) license? Well that’s the third rule, (I forgot the second rule is not to use words with Initial Capital Letters unless they’re proper ones and not to use things like italics, underlining, bold etc. (or things like etc. come to that) Are there any more rules? Not really. In fact, the first three rules aren’t that important, in fact, fuck the rules, all of them.
There are no rules in this game boy.
That’s when I usually wake up, but get this, sometimes when I wake up it’s only into another dream, but it takes a few seconds to realise that, sometimes longer, and then, after squeezing my eyes tight shut before opening them again and finding myself in another place that could be a dream, and it is, and I’m getting suspicious by now and wondering if I’ll ever get back to fully conscious reality, so I settle for this.
But it’s been a long time now, in this reality, so I guess it must be the real one, at least it will have to do for the time being because I’m too tired to fight it any more and here I am, here is where I’ve made my home.
So, in this reality, there are things I have to deal with, things besides the essentials, like sleeping and eating and earning a living. Things like Ken and Lucy and Her (capital allowed), because that’s all that’s left now. These are the only things I have to deal with now, so what’s stopping me? Maybe I’ve just run out of steam, maybe there’s no oomph left in me, I’ll just have to accept all these unresolved things that are bugging me.
But then again, maybe not.
OK, Ken. Here I come.
I’m going to sort you out at last.
Ken will be in the club, he’s bound to be, it’s like his domain, his kingdom, and he likes to sit on his throne in the bar, his fat gut pressed against the dark wood table, the cheeks of his fat arse hanging out the sides of the chair. He’ll be drinking as usual, smoking dope, nipping off to the toilet or his office now and again to stick some cocaine up his ugly nose (although he pretends to have a weak bladder), that’s the one thing he seems to be ashamed of – his weakness.
Problem is, I can’t be seen in the club, can’t be seen by anyone tonight, got to avoid the CCTV cameras and the nosy cops – got to get through the network of Ken spies like Gollum – got to kill the bastard. That’s the only way it will end unless I just disappear, vanish into that land of bumness where nobody knows and nobody cares. But I’m not going to do that, because I’ve got pride, and besides I wouldn’t leave the rest of them in the shit like that, because there’s bound to be some repercussions (not all of them bad I’m sure but I can’t take the risk).
So it’s got to be Ken.
He’s got to have it.
He’s got to go.
Pandora – Acrylic on box canvas – 1000mm x 1200mm
Same size canvas as Namaste and Sister Liz
My latest painting – finished today – it’s quite big. I love it – it makes me feel good when I look at it, there’s something spiritual about it I think.
Namaste – Acrylic on box canvas – 1200mm x 1000mm
There are another 2 of the same size and similar style: Sister Liz and Pandora
Some Work in Progress
Dani Girl – Acrylic on Canvas – approx 8″ x 10″
There’s always a story.
I was sitting in the studio staring at the walls, feeling despondent. There was nothing there. No inspiration – no focus – no purpose. The universe was empty. All I had was some dregs of acrylic paint and 5 or 6 old failed canvases that had been painted in some form of pseudo-abstract meaningless squiggles and splodges.
In desperation I squeezed random bits of paint on the canvases and pushed them about with a brush until they each one was completely painted over in whatever colour emerged from the random scraps.
I left the studio for a couple of hours and distracted myself by eating, feeling even more miserable, and trying to catch up on some sleep. When I returned I picked up the same brush and the same dregs of paint and looked for some form. I chose one of the blanked out canvases and traced the shape of a head on the ridges of dried acrylic and found its features.
Thus Dani Girl emerged and the universe wasn’t empty any more.
Job done.
Update: the next day
Here’s the other 4 canvases
Writing this blog is very much like writing in a private diary and then putting it back into a drawer.
Anyway – here’s another painting that I dug up from the shed and revived
Jackie and all her flaws – Acrylic on Box Canvas – 12″ x 16″
Not sure why or what but here it is
Not sure of the size – around 12″ wide?
Tair Chwaer – Three Sisters. Oil on Canvas- revived from 2010 in 2018 approx 12″ x 9″
What have I become? – Oil on Canvas 80cm x 60cm – Price: TBA
The first painting finished(?) in the new studio – actually painted over a painting done last year that never really worked – see below. I’ll get a better pic at some point – the colours on the actual painting are much more subtle than this photo suggests.
The Estuary – Oil on Canvas 80cm x 60cm
As you can see “What have I become” still has the DNA of “The Estuary” but I think it says much more.
A kiss of Light?