Written musings on making art and the results. Life in the slow lane
Alternative Art Gallery
The camera helps me in my visual playground. It is responsive and instantaneous, and so easy to dispose of unsatisfactory images. It is a strand of my art that I am weaving more and more into finished pieces. This day was particularly visually rich.
Cliff Walk 27
Yesterday the wind howled across the waves. Spume blew across the shingle and was carried through the air like partially deflated party balloons. Wind driven spray broke hard against the cliffs sending a fine mist of saltwater high into the air. Salt obscured my glasses as raindrops rattled on my hood like buckshot.
A Green and Pleasant Land
In this show the scale of the phtographic print becomes part of the thought provoking nature of the art. In some work it gives stature to the banal, allowing the banality to impose itself on the viewer. For others the scale making the works truly revelatory
Luxury on Rails
The beauty of the country is showcased through the windows of this train, as are the local standards of service through the charm and courtesy of the staff. Design harks back to an age when grace and pleasure in travel were key ingredients of the experience, when comfort was more important than style alone
Towards Journeys End
It has taken the year since the operations to fully recover, as much as I ever will fully recover. I’ve had my ‘three score and ten’ now. Probability says I have another decade at least. I intend it to be productive and positive. I paint, therefore I am.
The Past is Another Country
I enjoyed my bout of nostalgia even if it left me grieving for a nation sold down the river by its politicians. Thank goodness some care about our past, and are willing to give their time and pride to share it with others. You can enjoy these escape hatches too, there are 181 of them, not just in England but 22 in Wales, 9 in Scotland, 7 in Northern Ireland
Passion in Poznan
Then there she was, the Beautiful Helena, fully revealed in all her glory. What a night time experience!
Exhibition Time Again
My latest exhibition is in Lewes (see poster) 1st November until 12th December. Get in touch if you would like me to meet you there to discuss the work. Work will be for sale
Hospitality Design Part 3
the designer is in a position once ascribed to the fine artist as being the ‘elite of the servant classes’. The profession needs to address this weakness if it is to achieve the true status the press ascribes in its worship of design.
Lunch Out
The sun tries to break through the autumn mist. Lunch out, “we’re on us ‘olidays”. Well, yes if just not having to go in to work every day counts as holiday. I ought to feel blessed. Really, I should. I am walking some of England’s most spectacular coastline almost...
Hospitality Design Part 2
More companies go bust when they take on marketing just as they realise they are in trouble. Your cashflow forecasting is a way of anticipating events enabling preventative action to be taken.. Also don’t ignore what the politicians are up to – they cause recessions.
Hospitality Design
There are several patterns of payment for design fees, and I would outline these, with their advantages and disadvantages, below. I would caution all designers to get a written instruction before proceeding with any work, and caution all hotel groups to control line managers so that they do not dishonestly appoint designers to do work when they don’t have authority to do so.
Happy Chappies
I have fallen in love with Africa. Whether it is the foodie delights of Cape Town, the wines of the fabulous vineyards, the tranquillity of the West Coast or the wildlife attractions, the Namibian Deserts or the astonishing beauty of the birdlife I have never ceased to be delighted and amazed.
Flying Saucers
Tucked into the scrub but visible from the nearby car park is a mysterious circular structure. At its heart is a ring of conical points looking for all the world as if they were designed to support one of the landing ‘flying saucers’, perhaps crewed by little green men as reported widely by imaginative citizenry
Rathfinny’s Riley Stripes
I need the mental resilience to see a reason for moving forward, into developing the ideas into various forms, Digital imagery can be quick and simple to play with but the recent Four Seasons series based on photographs of garden buckets shows that they work best when they go ‘interactive’ with pencils and other implements.
Found in the Fields
This is a creative marriage of poet and painter that produces a result that embellishes the work of both Carry Akroyd and John Clare.
Hotel Design Revisited:Cube/HotelMy Tyrol
The changes made to the operation have enhanced its attractiveness, especially the addition of the pool to the front of the building. The design changes are evolutionary and reflective of the operator standards. In some ways, the design concept is diluted but the fact this is now operated by someone other than the original suggests either there was a need for marketing muscle, or the original concept did not survive the rigors of recession on the Continent/global warming impact on the winter ski season or poor marketing.
Ditchling’s Eric Gill Exhibition
Just over a year since my last visit to the Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft, I make the jaunt again, this time to see a more in-depth look at the work of Eric Gill (1882 – 1940). Much controversy surrounded this exhibition because of Gill’s sexual activities with...
A Hole in my Bucket
Truly it is the Landrover of garden tools and deserves a similar iconic respect as that robust farmers truck achieved .All hail the bucket. A true design icon
Long and Winding Road
“Living is easy with eyes closed Misunderstanding all you see It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out It doesn't matter much to me” (Strawberry Field Forever- the Beatles) Funny how on this long and winding road, life goes along. Just three years ago I...
Alas Poor Robin
I go and sit back amongst the roses, relaxing, slowing my breath and breathing deeply of their scent as my heart beat slows again. Then, rivalling the musical trill of the blackbird, I hear the lovely liquid notes of a serenading robin. It is all the thanks I need.
Trust?
At a time of elections politicians ask us to put our trust in them. They all lie about what they will do after the election in the hope of winning our vote, this being of course why the percentage of people voting goes down and down. It’s a dangerous game they play,...
4 Seasons
As I work through the ideas underpinning my ‘Four Season’ group of paintings, I pause to draw breath and appreciate where I am right now. If you have followed my blogs you will have seen my tale of cancer, starting in November 2012 when I revealed the diagnosis. It...
Alternate Reality
In my last piece I wrote that artists may be their own Trump, viewing the world and creating their own interpreted reality from it. I wrote how my own work had unconsciously become a simulacrum of events outside myself and the studio. I may not have been so far from...