painting

Still here…still plugging away

It seems I’ve missed posting anything for well over a month – I guess that’s ‘lockdown’ for you. But I’m still at it, making work and planning projects. One is coming up soon…and monopolising quite a bit of my time at present.

There’s more information about it here…but if you just want the pictures they will appear on Instagram, Twitter & Facebook each day from SATURDAY April 17th.

Meanwhile I’m still pushing on with both the Lunar Pulls pictures (though rather occasionally and with a change of focus and approach) and the latest instalment of the ‘mega-project’ that is tracking the whole of Leicestershire through series of paintings for each district. I’m currently on the third leg, the Melton District, that I’m calling Painting The Town Red. This is the painting for Kirby Bellars.

Kirby Bellars, 30 x 40 cm., oil on canvas, 2021

As the days drift by…

Work continues, and some things are completed. But it gets harder to find motivation during this – seemingly – everlasting lockdown. Not least as the prospects of work ever seeing the light of day seem ever more remote. However I had my first jab a couple days back so as more and more of us are inoculated we can only hope that some kind of partial resolution of our predicament is somewhere up ahead. Meanwhile I’ve polished off another Enid panel…

Enid’s Chelsea Nightclub, Acrylic on panel, 30 x 30 cms.

and I’m also delighted to be able to post the very first of the paintings that will comprise the third series of Leicestershire boroughs – Painting The Town Red – the Melton District series. This one is Welby. I doubt anyone knows the place so my take on it remains an enigma!

Welby (Painting The Town Red), oil on canvas, 30 x 40 cms.

Enid…

Enid’s Nash, acrylic & ink on board, 30 x 30 cm., Feb. 2021

These panels were carried over from Very Like Jazz…from a few years back. So I’ve dusted them off and worked them up dreaming my dreams of Marx and Nash in NYC – I don’t know if either of them ever visited but no matter…

Enid’s Ticker Tapes, acrylic & ink on board, 30 x 30 cm., Feb. 2021
Enid’s Morning Lake, acrylic & ink on board, 30 x 30 cm., Feb. 2021

And amongst them are one or two from other reveries…

Krazy Keyser Korner Geezer, acrylic on board, 30 x 30 cm., Feb. 2021

The Storm

Along the sea-wall, a steady sloshing of the swell,

The waves not yet high, but even,

Coming closer and closer upon each other;

A fine fume of rain driving in from the sea,

Riddling the sand, like a wide spray of buckshot,

The wind from the sea and the wind from the mountain contending,

Flicking the foam from the whitecaps straight upward into the darkness

Thinking this one may have a metaphorical content at present.

Quote from Roethke poem of the same title…

Turn about…

Thurcaston
Thurcaston, Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 cm., 2020

A complete volte face…back to my Playground of the Midlands series…and the lay off means having to put a very different ‘head’ on.  Back to working off of specific visual sources (that is referencing images crudely constructed from photos take on site). Working to resolve them whilst readjusting to using oils and as Thomas Nozkowski used to say keeping them open “so that everything is back in play”.

Sileby
Sileby, Oil on canvas, 30 x 40 cm., 2020

A red letter day…

IMG_7405
five years back I was heavily engaged in putting together a show of Kevin Coyne‘s art.  If you don’t know Kevin was a ‘cult’ musician (i.e. little commercial success but feted by several critics and other musicians and suchlike – John Peel was an early champion) but also an artist and writer.  He was a proud son of Derby and a group of three, his longtime pal Paul Warren, filmmaker Doug Smith and myself, put together a modest exhibition at Deda, the dance based arts centre in the city on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his death.

We crowdfunded the thing and included a small catalogue as part of the ‘rewards’.  And as part of the catalogue the excellent Jeff Young allowed me to use a lovely piece he had penned for The Guardian feature ‘The greatest albums you’ve never heard’.  This is all by way of a shameless plug for Jeff’s marvellous memoir Ghost Town.  It arrived this morning but I had to be out early and have only now been able to tuck into it.  But even after the few pages of the first chapter its contents are as great as the production values of the Little Toller imprint – first rate.

IMG_2582
Charles Houghton Howard’s Painting (1), 1961 out for my research!

And whilst I was ordering Jeff’s book I recalled a conversation back in February when I was at Swindon Museum & Art Gallery  giving a talk on Charles Howard (an obsession of mine).  A couple came up at the end & mentioned their research on Clifford Webb.  I think the chap mentioned a book he had recently completed on him…and Little Toller published, last year, a marvellous volume on Webb…whether it’s author – Simon Brett – was the man I met I cannot be certain (February seems an awful long time ago now!).  But the book is, like Jeff’s, beautifully produced and I’m looking forward to it immensely now I’ve purchased it alongside Ghost Town.