Here’s Nikki
Nikki is one of a series of characters, each with their own unique back story. Back stories will be published later.
Nikki
Acrylic on Canvas Board
4ocm x 50cm – 16” x 20” approx
Tag: blog
Sorrow
Acrylic on box canvas – 70cm x 100cm/28″ x 40″
There’s a little story behind this painting. When I write it up I’ll paste it below. For now I’m happy to have finished it, it’s taken months on and off.
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Old Pals
Old Pals: Acrylic on Canvas 51cm x 40cm – 20″ x 16″
Podcast, September 10th 2022 – Sorrow
An early walk to the weir
An early walk to the weir
young gulls, learning
loving, cold, water
rushing, falling
casual crows, black, white-necked, doves
pecking, grass
ducks, basking, blissfully, bathing,
warm, bright, gold, late summer, sun
river, tumbling
endless, rushing, song
Annie’s bench
sitting, silently, thinking
days, ahead, days,
long gone.
Again
swans, duck, dive
tails, aloft
beaks, beneath, sparkling surface
young gulls, splashing
ugly dogs rushing
stationary ducks, wet mud, camouflaging
fallen, fruit
overfed crows
loping lazily, grass grazing
walking, home, day, beginning
Everything Changes
A link to my songs on Bandcamp that I wrote some time ago and recorded last year along with Dafydd as Mwgwd
https://mwgwd.bandcamp.com/
Opening Chapter Dec 2001
This is something I wrote in 2001, that’s nearly twenty-one years ago as I write this. It’s either genius or a piece of shit. I suppose it could even be both.
You decide! (or not, I don’t care)
it’s a mystery
A lazy writer?
What it is see, is that I’m a lazy writer. No, it’s true, I know that I could work much harder and craft every sentence, every paragraph, every chapter, every verse, every simile or metaphor into something that is entirely professional and rock solid. No, I could, I really could do it – every time.
Thing is, I don’t.
Why is that?
More importantly, does it matter?
And, in any case, lazy people deserve to have their voices heard too. After all, there are a lot of them about. Yeah, I know, there are a lot more people who don’t have the skills or experience to write well, whose voices are never heard, and it’s not their fault, so you could say, so what if your voice is unheard, for every one of you, lazy writers, there are a million others who will never have their voices heard and it’s not even their fault, it’s not their choice, they just don’t have the option. They may even be illiterate through no fault of their own.
But you do, you do have the choice, and the opportunities and still you produce sub-standard work simply because you’re lazy.. And don’t try and say that you have produced millions of words, published novels, short stories, poetry, articles, opinion pieces, musings and whatever else. They are lazy words. A million lazy words are less than equivalent to a thousand well-crafted.
You could say all that couldn’t you? But, what the hell, I still say that even lazy writers deserve their voices heard or at least out there in the ethers of life in the twenty-first century.
You don’t have to listen you know.
A deliberate poem – Brown Black Birds
I wrote this poem yesterday while sitting in my car in a car park in Cardiff. It took around 15 minutes to write and another 2 minutes to record after reading it through.
The original text was not edited and neither was the recording, but I was tempted.
Sometimes the raw unedited material has something special about it that should be preserved.
Here’s the audio recording.
and here’s the original text
A Deliberate Poem – Brown Black Birds
A blackbird, a finch
pecking, feeding
This is their Eden
Other birds
Chirping
as they watch
from the green leaf-laden
branches
Another blackbird
perched on a chimney pot
You don’t normally see them
up there
Maybe it’s a big starling
or a small jackdaw
It’s a bird anyway
A fat brown blackbird
a collection of worms
dripping
from its beak
It’s a car park
in an inner city suburb
where people suffer
from drugs and poverty
from ignorance and brutality
from neglect and abuse
from the greed
from the selfishness
from the well-rewarded
jailors
via each other
while the blackbirds
and the finches
and the starlings
and the jackdaws
and the brown black birds
chirrup in their paradise
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The beginning of something?
Work in progress
Acrylic on Canvas 600mm x 690mm
After a while.
Table 9
19:15-Chapter TABLE 9 It’s kinda tucked away at the side of the Café-Bar near the entrance to the Art Gallery Table 9 A place to look to assess to judge and comment There’s a woman with her daughter slurping on soup and munching on salad and drinking diet cola A family with two parental figures one presents as a man the other a woman They are at a long canteen-style table with 5 kids Aged from two to ten by the look of them (later you realise that there are three people who are presenting as parents and just 4 kids and you realise that whatever narrative you are imposing is full of your own perspective and is not a universal fact) Their table is laden with drinks, some alcoholic, and café-style plates of food They have screens with games “It’s not cheap cheese” says a young man delivering a plate to a solitary middle-aged woman who must have complained about the price I’m eating dirty vegan fries – a special order they said – and a pint of some German beer, that cost me thirteen poundsAnd thinking about the fish and chips I bought in 1964 for one shilling and three old pennies before decimalisation and before, long before, I became a vegan 30 years later but now it’s 2022 and things have changed as they do always And my friend, who works here and greeted me on my arrival 30 minutes ago told me about how he came to consciousness earlier today in the void and thought for a second that there had been a nuclear war These vegan dirty fries are difficult to eat because the melted vegan cheese sticks them together in clumps
And when you spear one with your fork it brings half a dozen of its closest friends with it to your mouth So you have to separate them with your fingers and stuff them in or eat too many at once so you look around the café-bar to make sure no-one is watching you being a messy dick and then you realise, it doesn’t matter it’s not real because there probably has been a nuclear war and you probably are in the void dreaming of what might have been
And your friend, the one who woke up in the original void has disappeared and you realise that you are a dot the size of a neutrino in a universe the size of . . . . . . the universe and it really doesn’t matter – even though it really does Message to mes This is a message to all the mes in all the parallel universes It’s me You are the light You are the love always and forever The Younger Generation I am a member of the younger generation and I always will be you are too I’ll never be old that’s what the 60’s did for me and for you Beware Beware of people who sit alone in the café-bars of arts centres drinking something like a pint, or a cup of tea and they’re writing in a notebook or a paper pad or on the touchscreen of an ipad (type thing), and they look up now and again and scan the room Beware of them They are writing about you
It’s a compromise
a few recent paintings
here’s a few recent paintings.
there’s about 50 altogether, mostly 12″ x 10″ – 30cm x 25cm – acrylic on canvas, some larger acrylic on paper. Most painted on the coffee table in the evenings over the last few months.
some may be for sale, contact me if interested
This is Petal
Anyway, here’s Petal.
Art Exhibition
Click on an image to begin
Crocuses finished on wall
Framed and ready to roll. This painting will be on display and for sale at The Wholefood Shop in a few days. Not sure about the price yet but I like it a lot so . . . .
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Crocuses
Oils on canvas 2017
needs finishing and framing – planning to do it over the Easter weekend
It will be on display in The Wholefood Shop after that.
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Poem – Twin Towers
Here is a poem written after the event
Twin Towers
I was wounded first –
the blow caught me in the neck.
I couldn’t breathe,
then –
with a whoosh of fire,
my mouth opened
and huge clouds of smoke fled out.
I didn’t realise I had such energy,
such love.
I smiled when I knew I was dying;
I always said I would go first.
You watched as I choked, incredulously,
not wanting to believe
in my mortality.
My belly shook, I retched and coughed,
but your strength,
the power of your gaze,
began to mend.
Then –
you were smacked in the chest;
a direct hit to your heart,
and you shuddered
but you didn’t scream;
there was no sound
yet.
That’s when I caught your eye;
that’s when I knew
we were both going to die.
In that silent lightless time
I watched, still wounded,
still breathing burning breath,
then –
you deflated with a groan
that shook the world.
I stood, shocked, alone in emptiness
that spread like nothing
through the universe.
With no light left, I crumbled too;
we sighed together, merged –
forever
in mounds of dirt.
Then
I knew that love can never die
not even then, not in that place
where the world was witness
to our hurt.
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Skin and Bones – New Novel available now
Skin is a taxi driver, Bones is a Detective Inspector. They hate each other but both operate on the same patch, the large ex-industrial town of Elchurch on the South Coast of Wales. A young woman is found dead and they are both drawn into the investigation. But all is not what it seems as the brothers separately and together deal with the consequences of the murder.
Available now:
Kindle Version: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B08QJ8MSCB
Paperback: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1904958737
