Little Chalk Crosses

A letter arrives, beginning;

"Dear Artist,

Thank you for submitting your work to be considered for the Bulldog Bursary, your effort is greatly appreciated.

Although your work was not short-listed for the final selection, the committee hopes you might submit future work to bursary and to the Royal Society of Portrait Painters Annual Open in 2012.[...]"

I do, yes, resent being addressed as 'Artist', and being told I wasn't selected in a sort of roundabout, "you should have figured it out by now" sort of way, especially when I paid £6 to enter and a total of £57 to get the painting to and from London. Which, i might as well add, was utterly unneccesary when you consider that much more prominent art competitions select a shortlist based on online digital submissions, which would have saved me £57. But when a gallery writes you letter to tell you you've been declined, you can maybe see that efficiency isn't to their strengths. This is further stressed on their website, www.mallgaleries.org.uk, where up to 6 competitions, with varying rules and submission details, all use the same registration pack and application form, hence the confusion over when i actually had to get my paintings back.

But, for all the weaknesses of Mall Galleries and Royal Society of Portrait Painters, i can't help feeling that maybe they'd got it right by rejecting the paintings i submitted.

I like them both. The first one, of my dad holding a pigeon, is especially good around the hands and pigeon.. not the face then. And it could be viewed as unfinished, both the background and the coat are very flat, plain, ad un-nuanced, the face is dry, and although as a whole i like it, it does need some work. The second painting, perhaps the most complete of the two, is of my girlfriend, maybe it says something that the most complete painting is the one i did in uni, with a full support system in place. But, in terms of consistency, these paintings do not fit well together, they are not a united front, they are disparate, erratic, and could have been done by two completely different people.

But what i feel is most worthy of learning from this, is the unfinished..ness of my recent paintings. The colours, too simple, too reliant on heightened bright sections, and easy complementaries. Too reliant on outlines, and i'm too easily bored and too easily willing to move on to the next work. With no-one to be able to tell me when, no, i have to wait until i review my work in a few months time, and then i tell myself, as if i was looking over my own shoulder, "that's not right."

try, try again.

Trans Siberian Railway

Some photos landed in my inbox the other day (i say landed, i mean dropped). They show the route of the train exhibition, the Trans-Siberian Railway exhibition, which takes around a week to travel from Moscow to Beijing and which i had the above image in. I didn't go on the train, as much as i'd have liked to, but i was sent pictures of it's journey, which was nice, though a little like it had been kidnapped.

'Images courtesy of KITCHEN projects, 2011' (well, apart from the first one, which is mine.)

Burden

 

well, this is the final of a four-part image, in that i've repainted it four times. I'm happy with it. This draft is called 'Burden', i took out the other guy he was punching at which seemed to create some confusion as to what he was angry at, almost as if he was fighting himself. And i think by making the landscape hilly, the land reflects some sort of inner turmoil.

yes, i've carried on with the home serial, as i'm calling it. This one is based on a memory of a space, of my father's uncle and aunt's. We called them auntie evelyn and uncle reg when they were alive. In the hallway it was rather dark, and this big grandfather clock greeted you. Now the house is owned by my aunt, my dads sister, and there was a bit of suspicion about who it was left to. So, i haven't been there in around 10 years, but the memorys insist. I have another one for the room at the end on the right, as a child i remember a white wedding dress being hung up in the bedroom there, it was a scary house, and a creepy scene. It will do for the next painting. But that's it, i'm not quite sure whether this series is about more generalised spaces that i remember, or particular events, i've been mixing them up as they both seem to work quite well, though in slightly different styles.

the loser with a whale in his eye

I'm a little upset. My painting studio is at the bottom of my dads garden, it's a very long garden, shaped like an L from above, as there is a piece of garden at the bottom which shoots off at a 90 degree angle to the left, and goes behind the bottom of his neighbours gardens. Growing up this hidden place was where me and my brother made a den near a huge sycamore tree, now cut down. Where we had bonfires. Where i had a basketball net when i was going through that phase.

For just over a year now i've been in the greenhouse painting away, with no problems. Now, my brother and his friend have decided they want to put up a greenhouse in my dad's garden and grow things. Fair enough, there's enough space so why not. But, it seems they've been into my studio, snooped around at the paintings, and are sniggering at the willy on show in the above.

In some respects i am extremely private, i enjoy a certain amount of solitude. My working space is my own, i require a space which is mine, which has boundaries, where not just anyone can wander through uninvited and act like schoolboys. So, at the moment, i feel very threatened and vulnerable. It's bad enough not having a place of my own, or earning money, or missing the most important person in my life. I don't want people trampling through my space as if they own it.

the life and death of a triangular headed moron

(who is in fact looking up at the stars)

i am

i am interested in the horror of the world, nuclear disaster, wastelands, i often think of the end of civilisation, the last strands of humanity. I'm interested in humanity, usually under the influence of sentimentality and nostalgia. I create modern paintings with the remnants of long gone, archaic ideas of beauty, gender and sex. Occasionally and consciously inverted, surreal. mine is a strange world view, straddling both old and new, conservative and anarchic, gentle and brutal.