It was in all of the broadsheets at the weekend and shamefully it seems that the Beeb is closing down the wonderful 6Music station. Where else can yopu listen to Captain Beefheart, Elmore James, Iggy and the Stooges and be introduced to great new music like Mumford and Sons or CSS while you’re eating your porridge at 6:30 in the morning. The station is loosely carrying on the good work carried out by John Peel. Lauren Laverns morning show is wonderful ( thankfully they gave George Lamb the elbow) and Stuart Maconie’s freek zone is unmissable.
My painting Khama is being seriously tested this year with the loss of Simon Mayo from 5Live to an uncomfortble drive time slot on Radio 2. Jonathan Ross is off and now the unforgivable news that 6Music is to be canned. This kind of specialist thing the BBC understands and does better than anyone and I can’t believe that they are going to pull the plug.
Here are some petitions:
www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/consultation (this is the main one)
www.petition.fm/petitions/6musicasiannet/1000/
www.facebook.com/pages/Save-6-Music/318069702319
www.facebook.com/group.php?wall&grid=278123313911
March 1st, 2010
Here’s a recent portrait coimmission that I did of a lovely guy caled Ben. He’s been travelling around South America for the past 10 months or so and getting into a series of scrapes en route . We had the sittings before he went and I paintied the portrait while he was away. The composition is influenced by the wonderful photographer Richard Avedon who I have always admired. I wanted the weight of the composition to be to the right of the painting and he’s almost leaning on the edge of the picture.
March 1st, 2010
I went tothe “Party” exhibition at Walsall Art gallery last week to celebrate 10 years in busines. It was a fantastic turnout to silence its critics over the years. In fact looking at this photo it looks like a biblical turnout. It’s still as popular as ever and it’s a great show to celebrate called “Party”. I’ve got a small piece in from the Kitty series and there’s some great pieces by Gilbert and George, Paula Rego and a lovely one by Graham Dolphin -( I went to art college with his brother).
Here’s my wife Anne and her sister at the opening.
March 1st, 2010
It’s been 10 years since Te New Art Gallery, Walsall opened its doors to the public and they’re having a party exhibition to celebrate. Should be a pretty cool series of events I think and an accompanying exhibition with some pretty big name artits in like Peter Blake, Martin Creed, Gilbert and George, Chris Ofili, Paula Rego, Sam Taylor Wood, Juergen Teller and Gavin Turk. I’ve got a piece in the show too and they’ve asked all the artists to do a birthday card for the gallery which will also be exhibited alongside the rest of the Party themed work. Here is my card which is a “Party Tape”, the kind of thing we used to take to house parties back in the student days or give to people you really liked. I think there is quite a growing nostalgia for party tapes in the digital age.
( Click on the image for a closer look at the track listing)
December 29th, 2009
I went for a kind of “works do” with some artist friends – ( most from the Plus One Gallery) just before Christmas. It’s the kind of year when artists miss out on office parties because we work generally in isolation which is why Simon has set up a festive piss up. We went around the German Market by the town hall which has really taken off and I think is now the biggest in Europe. It’s a great festive atmosphere and a boozy time was had by all. (Chris, Simon, Tom, Steve and me)
December 29th, 2009
I’m currently working on a portrait commission of the fantacy fiction author Alan Garner OBE for the Grosvenor Museum in Chester which has come about thanks to a grant from the Victoria and Albert museum in London. I’ve been up to visit Alan and his wife at their wonderful old cottage near to Jodderal Bank – (is that how you spell it?) He’s famous for many books like The Wierdstone of Brisingamen and The Moon of Gomrath and som o his works have been turned into TV shows. There’s more information on Alan at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Garner and http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/g/alan-garner/
Their cottage is just fantastic, almost like a Hobbits house with log burners, broken tiled floors, anchient furniture , old doors and books and lots of archaeological findings from the grounds of the cottage. There’s huge potemntial in this portrait so I’m really enjoying it. I’m not sure about revealing updates , I’ll haveto check when it’s ok to post a few , but this is my current project. ( the photo is just a photo, not my portrait of him)
December 29th, 2009
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
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