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 . . . .
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.
Oil on canvas 15/6/2020 – 60cm x 50cm / 24″ x 20″
Painted between April and June 2020 during the Covid lockdown. On display in The Wholefood Shop Cardiff and for sale at the right price.
The painting was started as a pure abstract, in the sense that there was a blank canvas, a random selection of oil paints, brushes and spatulas and no definable objective in mind other than the need to spread some colour and create an image.
What emerged is a representation of what it felt like during lockdown and when the first signs of its easing began.
The colours are fiery, representing the fever of coronavirus. The composition is of two individuals facing away from each other as if to maintain social distancing. The shape in the middle is undefined but may be thought of as an unknowable and unspeakable thing, an awareness of the hugeness and awfulness of the virus on the psyche of those who happen to be alive during the pandemic.
Yet, at its core it is a joyous and hopeful image, with a bright and powerful energy that comes from the very heart of the universe, from the source of life and love itself.
What’s it all about then?
No one’s got a clue really, but we try to do our best.
This website exists to display a bit of one person’s attempts to do their best. When I say ‘best’ I’m not sure if that’s true in the sense that everything here is perfectly crafted, because it’s not. Some of it is roughly hewn or not hewn at all, simply pointed at, but then again, maybe that’s the best I can do.
I dunno.
I reckon that less than 1 in 100 visitors to this website are actual human beings so if you’re one of them and not a bot, and have managed to read this far down the page, I hope you can find something of interest here.
Just scroll and click and search. Turn over some metaphorical stones – there’s quite a lot to uncover even if I do say so myself.
blah blah – you know the score – here’s a poem from 1999 about knowing the score
ninetyfivefive you know the score in a movie or a tv show the flaws small flaws idiosyncratic flaws twelve flaws or just one we’re allowed to be flawed it’s ok as long as in the end we’re fucking good at our job in my real life i’m an artex ceiling of cracks and fissures with some small redemption it’s kind of arse-backwards ain’t it?
Here’s a short video clip set on/in a bin
Taken the same time as the photo in a previous post, i.e. March 16th, at the beginning of lockdown
Started this at the beginning of lockdown – been fiddling with it since – finally finished it yesterday (April 24 2020)
Painted on a charity shop frame and mount
cropped
Original Photo
This is a short video I made to help promote the upcoming play from Company of Sirens at Chapter Arts in Cardiff
here’s Candigirl
and here’s Candigirl in a frame
It’s a collage, that’s what it is, it’s a coll-fucking-age
if I don’t paint I can’t write, in fact if I don’t paint I lose the plot . . . it takes a while, months, sometimes longer, but here it comes again . . . sorry, got to go and paint . . . if anything decent comes out of my forthcoming painting session I’ll post it here, you’ll be the first to know . . . back in a bit . . . . . . it’s later . . . well, that didn’t go very far, there was a fair bit of tidying up and sorting out paints and brushes and canvases, not to mention collecting all the other stuff that had accumulated in the shed and putting it out of the way . . . then it was too hot to paint in there so very little got done (painting-wise) . . . then there was cooking and generally mooching about and just being unfocused . . . and now . . . here’s the result . . .
so, writer or painter then?
neither I suppose, not today anyway
Random Words of Today
*****
and while we’re at it, this is another little random podcast from the other day
it’s called RE: Tories Left Right etc.
*****
and yet another recoded just an hour or so ago
this one is Art Light Love Universe
*****
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?
