Posts filed under 'Art'
Here’s a recent drawing that I made of a friend of the son of a friend of my wife. It’s a portrait of Sean aged 17. He’s got quite an interesting face, I think a little like a young Damon Albarn, although I know that Sean isn’t keen on that comparison , though he is into really great music for someone quite young, he’s certainly done his research. Anyway, I wanted to make a picture of somebody who was of an age / juncture that their life was at a certain crossroads so I used a background drawing New Street train station in Birmingham as a visual metaphor for this “crossroads”, an area which we were both familiar with. I juxtaposed this with the line drawing of Selfridges as an iconic symbol of Birmingham. It’s quite a serious loking portrait which I tend to go for and I think the lighting / modelling on Sean’s face adds to the atmosphere.
December 29th, 2009
Here’s the last picture that I did for the show. It’s a portrait of somebody that I met in Times Square about 5 years ago. I wanted to try the loose background technique to give the portrait a context and I think city scenes work particularly well so I combined the two. This one is in acrylic and it’s painted on MDF board which I cut into a circle with a jigsaw. Portraits can work extremely well in a circular format or can also look a little kitsch but hopefully it captures something of the meeting 5 years ago. I was particularly pleased with the clapped out NY cab to the right of the image. This piece is also in the show at Plus One Gallery which runs until Saturday 7th November.
November 5th, 2009
It’s been a week or two since I blogged because Anne and myself have recently moved and my internet has been down for 2 weeks which was both liberating and ostracising. Anyway, back up and running now so I just wanted to thank everybody that came to the opening night of my show back in October, I know that many of you travelled quite a long distance to come to the opening so I really appreciate all of your efforts because it’s quite easy to park your arse infront of the TV. Thanks also for Plus One for staging the exhibition in their beautiful Chelsea gallery and all the help and support they gave me, I’m delighted to be in their stable.
Here’s a few shots of the opening night.
November 5th, 2009
I will be having a solo exhibition in London at the Plus One Gallery in Chelsea. The Private View will be on the evening of Tuesday 13th October and the exhibition will run until 7th November 2009.
It will be a portrait based exhibition featuring new and recent portraits from America and Japan and a few British portraits too.
Click on the image for more details about the exhibition.
if you would like more information please contact me on [email protected] or the gallery on [email protected]
September 16th, 2009
Following on from the series of Harajuku Punks that I did before , way back in 1995 here is a more recent description. The coat she was wearing was everywhere amongst Tokyo’s youth culture late last year but knowing how transient and disposable Japanese society is they are probably all in the bin now.
It’s acrylic on canvas
click on the image for a larger view
September 16th, 2009
It sems like an eternity ago now but around 18 months ago I enterd my portrait of “Ronald” into the Wales Portrait Award 2, which is basically a carbon copy of the BP Portrait Awards in London. It’s a great exhibition and very professionally done with an excellent catalogue and prizes , again, similar to the BP. It basically stipulates that all of the artists haveto be Welsh or working in Wales or of a Welsh sitter – ( where my portrait qualified).
As in all of these competitions the visitors choices are inevitably different to the judges selections. All visitors are invited to write down their favourite portrait during the 18 month tour and luckily for me Ronald came top which I was delighted about , so thanks to all that voted , I’m just pleased that Ronald made such an impression / connection with people.
Here’s a picture of me with an oversized “lottey” style cheque which I took to the bank but couldn’t get under the counter. Just to the left hand side of th image is Peter Edwards’ portrait of Ryan Giggs , but unfortunately you can only just see his shoulders, sorry Peter.
The exhibition is at it’s 6th and final venue Rhyl Museum and Arts Centre until 19th September. I hadn’t been to Rhyl for years. My Grandad used to have a caravan there in the 1970’s and we used to go on family holidays up the A5 so the visit brough back a lot of memories too.
September 6th, 2009
Here is my latest , another portrait of Isao Suzuki in Tokyo, (see previous posts). This time in profile with a compositional bias towards the right hand side. It was an incredibly dingy jazz club, just a small black room with posters pealing off the wall and junk pilled up on the bar with about 20 seats positioned infront of the stage. I wanted to get a bit more of the atmosphere of the space so I included the back wall of the stairs.
(click on the image for a larger version)
September 6th, 2009
I met Isao Suzuki in an underground jazz club in Tokyo -(underground both physically and musically). My friend from my old foundation course, Anthony lives in Tokyo, though has since returned, and we met up and he took us to the club and arranged a sitting with Isao.
He’s in his 70’s now but is still “rockin’ out ” and very generously playing with a young band, taking a back seat, who I think keep him feeling young. He lived in New York towards the end of the golden age of American Jazz in the Late 60’s and early 70’s and played with such giants as Ella Fitzgerald, Theolonius Monk, Charlie Mingus and was one of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers for many years, Art being the person who initially invited Isao to America to play in his band.
I wanted to capture “in the moment” as he was playing, again using the dark background to focus full attention on him.
(click on the images to enlarge, the last one of the finished image should come up biggest )
August 6th, 2009
Here is a new picture of a trader that I met a Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, one of my favourite places ever. It’s got the sketcy background which I find incredibly liberating to do set against the photorealistic portrait. I particularly liked his beard and of course his bandana, any kind of head adornment in a portrait and I’m there. I think this was around 28″ long.
(click on the image for a bigger picture)
August 6th, 2009
Here is a very recent portrait commission of a lovely lady from my home town, Walsall. It is acrylic on canvas and is aproximately 36″ x 32″.
We took a huge number of photographs looking at about 23 different compositional possibilities and for quite some time they didn’t seem to be working just how I had intended. Then the final series of shots that I took just seemed to work perfectly, the pose was just right, expression, mood all came together. I’m so glad that I pushed it right to the end in the photography stage because we could easily have gone for something that didn’t quite work. I like to use space in my portraits because there is often so much detail in the portrait that it needs the space to resonate against and rest and it focuses the attention more on the figure with no distractions. It’s nice to be working in colour again too because I’ve done a lot of B/W paintings and drawings lately. This is the first of a pair of portraits. I will also be painting Christine’s husband who is a Reverend in his church with all the decorative and ornate possibilities of the space.
(click on the image to enlarge)
August 6th, 2009
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