Tag: mythmaking
-

Turner Prize at the Towner
Maybe it is the kiss of death for the prize to pick one piece as being head and shoulders above the rest of the works here, especially as the prize is given for something the judges have seen that we cannot. I suppose it will not surprise many that I would pick out
-
Diamonds in the Rough
The footpath over the cliffs sees 300,000 plus people making the walk along the path annually. Many stop to admire the cottages, an iconic view that is featured in movies all over the world; been used by pop stars as a backing to their music; is used by TV plays; detective series;
-
Artists Reviewed
There are now some 230+ articles on my artistic process and the life experiences that have moulded it, including of course a series of pieces on art education in which I was involved as a student and then a lecturer/course leaders/HOD for a number of years as well as an employer of arts graduates. In…
-
Woodblock Printing: Merlyn Chesterman
Merlyn spelt with y not with an i. Yet what magic do you weave as English Merlins do. Time too weaves its magic, and meeting after over 50 years was a strange dislocation of the time/space continuum. Whilst I have come across you in the professional world as a name it is the first time…
-
Process
Life is complicated. Living is a process. Plan it all you want but interruptions to the process are inevitable whether from internal failure or external forces, physical, emotional, financial. Life is like that. When an artist starts on a journey of discovery through vision and technique, they are like a mongrel with a juicy bone.…
-
Decay
I have watched and recorded through my work, the corruption and decay of a once great civilisation. I go not quietly…
-
Such is Living.
spinal stenosis is part of a growing (literally) problem with bony growth appearing where the shouldn’t. It is some form of arthritis it seems, affecting spine, legs, hands etc. In fact, from what the cardiac man says it is firing off signals from my nervous system which may be false, but to which my body…
-

Grandad’s Story Pt 1
Great grandad who owned the farm, killed himself driving his ‘roadster’ head on into a council steamroller, so grandad, who had apparently been gassed in WW1, had to make the farm bankrupt as he wasn’t fit enough to do all the work. He took a job in the Wirral as a pig man for the…
-

A Life in Art
It has been said that to be born an Englishman is to win the lottery of life. I remember being taught English folk songs at school – does this even happen anymore? My grounding in that English identity may even have irritated my Welsh father, but as a farm boy he introduced me to a…
-
Entropy
Ritual forms a part of all forms of worship and painting forms a part of that process. The spiritual is helped by formalised processes that allow the mind and spirit to dominate the body. My rituals are part of my response to beauty. Rituals the allow me to immerse myself making art and to still…
-

Art Education (part 3)
The truth is within your soul, your spirit is to challenge and rebel, not conform. If the Foundation course gives students to tools to do this with their lives it should be part of everyone’s education, not destroyed by the academic ambition of professors or the cost cutting of Universities who close workshops to save…
-

Art Educated? (part 2)
The success of the art college system outside of the Universities was the cause of its fatal decline. The Universities could not compete with the creative glow the colleges gave off even at the local level, and the thriving Dip.A.D. degree system was putting to shame traditional University art courses, except for those that were…
