moleskine new pages

I am so lucky I had a somewhat shitty childhood! What on earth would I have to thrash out in my artwork if not for my family's epic dysfunction. I have dealt with my feelings of helplessness and lack of control before. And I continue to relive my fantasies of revenge and wonder how I managed to avoid growing into a psycho killer!

I was looking at a book recently with photographs of east European prostitutes well past their prime. I couldn't stop thinking about the dreams and ambitions they must have had as young people and how life often shits on you so badly but you still carry on, and try and convince yourself that you were better off than some.

Browsing through the files of Ancestry.com (using their amazing 2 week free trial subscription), I started thinking about all the people with whom I had a blood connection, but whom I would never know. I was surprised at how much details can be gleaned, such as their jobs and how they died. It is eerie knowing that their blood runs through my veins. After ploughing through generations of grinding poverty, I found a line of aristocrats and slave owners. a great way to spend an rainy afternoon.

Pages from my current Moleskine sketchbook

Childhood insecurities...AGAIN! will I ever get beyond them? At this stage I doubt it. The feeling of being slightly out of step with one's peers. Being out of the loop and pretending not to care. All my peers seemed to my eyes to be so self assured, composed as if they'd received the life manual: read it, digested it and put it into action. I was missing something!

I think I am the bull in this image. the bullfighter is my show-off tormentor. I am the purple victor!

moleskine pages

Most of us dislike change, yet we crave it at the same time. We console ourselves that change will always be for the better even when we have no proof of that. When all else fails and our lives don't live up to our youthful expectations we comfort ourselves with the thoughts of a perfect afterlife. Hope is really the one thing that keeps humanity going, it triumphs over reality and makes us get up after every knock. Or are we just stupid?

This follows on on the theme of hope. The postman carries surprises, possibilities, not just bills and final demands.

Looking through a family photo album recently I was struck by how many of it's inhabitants are now ghosts. Every one of us is surrounded by an entourage of ghosts each with it's own little gravitational pull.

Moleskine pages..again!

We are all children in someways,  innocent and ignorant of what lies outside our field of vision.

No matter how old we are, we are still prey to hurtful comments and exclusion. Life is a school playground where we negotiate our alliances and pretend not to care when things go against us.

Does anyone remember Playschool? Every day we'd get to see through a different shaped window. I remember the thrill of anticipation as if it were yesterday.

More Moleskine pages anyone?

Sketches of people on the street, in queues, walking around etc. The one exposing her tits is a 'retired' street walker that was resorting to flashing her only asset for loose change.

The pain of infertility, the loneliness and feeling of redundancy and uselessness. Among other stuff like complicated relationships and ensuing power plays. Human relationships are strange and hard to fathom.

New work

This piece is a combination of rubber stamps, pen an d ink which is then water coloured. It is 35 cm x 12 cms on illustration board. The title is ' Do I have to hand you everything on a plate?'. The original is available for sale for £160, or a hand signed, hand finished print for the princely sum of £35.

Due to the limitations of my scanner some of the detail on the extreme right has been left out. It is 34 cms x 17 cms on illustration board. The meaning is quite clear, where we often mistake the mundane and ordinary for miracles of supernatural origin. That is partly wishful thinking I am sure! We all long for evidence that there is more to life and our existence that we know, we long for validation.  The original is £200, and the signed, hand finished print is £40.

The next five pieces are tiny little works 7cms x 8.5 cms on illustration board. This one is titled 'Clowns are such a cliche', and is rubber stamps, pen and ink , watercolours. The original is £45

7cms x 8.5 cms on illustration board. The title is 'Don't ask me to explain'. £45 for the original.

 'Just one (little) screw'. When I was 14 , I was accosted by a flasher on the way to school, he kept repeating those words. Innocent little me thought he was referring to his bicycle parts, and was asking for help! Mixed media on illustration board. 7cms x8.5 cms. £45

'The moon looks lonely'. When I was small I was obsessed by the fact that I could see the moon's features, to me it was a person. It bothered me that it was floating around all alone for all eternity. i had a tendency to project my feelings onto people and objects that surrounded me. 7cms x 8.5cms on illustration board. £45 for the original.

'Ovum', This piece relates to a discussion I had once about gender, fertility and procreation. No matter how we progress as a race, there are fundamental things we just can't change. 7cms x 8.5cms on illustration board. £45 for the original.

These pieces show another side to my work. As much as I enjoy the intricate, convoluted pages of my sketchbooks, I do like to express thoughts, ideas and memories in a more immediate way. Ideas that stand alone rather than be part of something else. I do have a lot of these , although they tend to go quickly!

Moleskine update

The Royal wedding and all the strange circus that goes along with it.

Eve tempting Adam with an apple, not having much else to offer him.

the inspiration quote comes from David Hockney, i think it is genius! You have to meet inspiration half way.

This page is not yet finished and I will talk about it once it reveals itself to me.

I'm not sure adding captions with explanatory texts is doing what I hoped it would. It seems to me that by offering an explanation the images are shrinking, and the meaning is becoming limited and not a little trite. The words I add are really just a very small part of what I put into the picture, I hold a lot back because the images are at times deeply intimate and overly revealing (to my eyes at least!). I hope I am leaving enough room to allow the viewer to see something else, something more. sadly, people don't have the time or inclination to engage in lengthy debates these days.