'Up There'

A friend sent me a great link to this short film by The Ritual Project the other day. It shows the work of Sky High Murals (above). A group of craftsmen dedicated to their trade, the Sky High painters are some of the last purveyors of the hand-painted advertising tradition. Many of the painters can be seen in the film, ‘UP THERE,’ a documentary about the fading craft of wall painting.

Whenever I’ve visited New York I’ve always been fascinated by these huge advertising paintings on the sides of the buildings, wondering who they were made by and curious that such a seemingly antiquated tradition still seemed to persist in these days of modern advertising hoardings. I wonder if they have any jobs going….? I'm handy with a big brush.

Here's the link:
http://vimeo.com/11175747

Kickabout

England's Feeling The Strain, 210 x 180cms, 1996-97

Unless you live in a cave (which let’s face it is kind of tempting sometimes), you’re probably aware that the World Cup is about to open tomorrow in South Africa. The buzz around it has prompted me to remember how over the years the so-called ‘beautiful game’ has featured in many of my paintings and drawings.

It’s not that I’m a huge football fan or anything, but I have often been interested in the culture surrounding football and it’s impact on ordinary lives. My Dad and older brother are huge football fans, supporting West Bromwich Albion, so it has always formed a backdrop to my early family life with the ritual of the Results at Saturday teatime, and filling in the pools coupon. There was also a period in the 1990’s when terrace culture really overlapped with club culture, which was what I was exploring in my paintings at this time. The painting above was an attempt to reflect this, with the floodlight also reminiscent of a nightclub strobe, and the nightclub spotlight doubling as one of the many surveillance cameras that are embedded in the areas around football grounds. John King’s debut novel, ‘The Football Factory’, which I read at the time, inspired some of the ideas in this painting, including the title. I don’t think it’s a brilliant read, but at the time it had a more contemporary take on white, working class culture which I found interesting. The painting also contains quite a lot of references to Goya’s work, which I was obsessed with at the time., and the Euro 96 competition. The painting evolved into a much darker piece as England were knocked out and rioting fans spilled out into the streets.

This painting, where the players look like the seventies ‘Star Soccer’ heroes, was about the escape football, and other sports such as boxing, has been for the working class over the decades, whether that is in becoming a professional player, or just through a brief respite from otherwise tough lives in a game with friends, which is what this painting was about. The ideas seem a bit sentimental now, as the modern game seems very dislocated from these roots to me. That’s also me in the background, as the location for this painting is based on a place I used to play football as a teenager.

Away From Home, oil on canvas, 150 x 220cms, 1997

‘Club Football’ below is a bit mad isn’t it? It touches on ideas of theme clubs and bars which were popular at the time. I actually entered this painting for the Royal Scottish Academy Summer Open Exhibition which was hopelessly naïve of me! Needless to say it was rejected. At this time I could knock out big, complicated and dense paintings like these quite easily, which is one of the reasons I stopped doing them. The other painting, ‘Peterborough’, is seen in an installation of ‘Local Derby’, an exhibition my friend Andy Page and I held in Cambridge. We were asked to produce football inspired pieces around the theme. My painting is based on the moments after a summer evening football match amongst friends at the local park. Perversely, but typical of me really, I produced a painting without a football to be seen!

Club Football, oil on canvas, 180 x 120cms, 1998

Peterborough, oil on canvas, 210 x 210cms, 1999

It’s hard to believe, but I transported both of these huge paintings down Edinburgh’s Prince’s Street on my friend Donald’s customised skateboard, which you could screw your painting to and wheel it along. The things you do as a skint and struggling artist. You couldn’t make it up, but I wouldn’t want it any other way really. Would I?

John McLean- Painting to Sculpture

'Traffic Yellow', steel, powder coated steel and powder coated aluminium, 102 x 55 x 33cms

I enjoyed these sculptures by John McLean at Bourne Fine Art on a recent visit to Edinburgh. He is a painter I’ve admired for a long time, and these seemed an interesting development. They seemed to owe a lot to Matisse, as do his paintings despite their pure abstraction, but then again who doesn’t? I can hardly talk. I think it’s still difficult to get around Matisse for anyone trying to create anything in paint that explores the area between the representational and abstract values of the medium. But I digress…here’s what John McLean had to say about these new works:

“Making sculpture is more an impulse than an idea for me. An artist’s intentions are multiplex and hard to pin down. And when they can be clearly articulated, they are not necessarily relevant. Ideally, no one should be suggesting what the viewer ought to see. I have always wanted my work to speak for itself.”

“All of my free-standing pieces are close to my paintings and collages. They have the same vocabulary of simple shapes and are equally reliant on colour. Polychromy in sculpture never died out, but since Cubism it has had new vigour.”

“No matter what the medium I work towards such an interdependence of parts that nothing could be added or taken away- a kind of absolute. When it happens, the eye and the spirit join up, just as the ear and soul do when you listen to a fine song.”

I love this quote. It is so well expressed. It speaks volumes to me about my own interests and values in painting that I struggle to articulate when talking about much of my own work. Below is a nice example of the paintings McLean is well known for. There is so much to enjoy and learn from in his work.

L'Eventail, acrylic on paper, 77 x 57,5cms

Black Crow Blues

I’ve had a bit of company in the studio this weekend in the form of this huge stuffed black crow that I’ve taken delight in drawing. One of my colleagues, Laura Gale in photography, at JCC borrowed this and several other birds from the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery Schools and Colleges Loans Service. They have all sorts of interesting animals, birds, and insects you can borrow. I had to smuggle this particularly handsome creature back on this occasion.

I’ve often borrowed different creatures from the Loans Service over the years for students to draw, but I must admit, although the students enjoy drawing them, I think I do more. It’s great to get so close to these things to study and understand them more intimately. Birds are a particular personal fascination, and I’ve made a quite a few drawings of them and a couple of paintings where they feature, but nothing I’ve been that pleased with. Maybe this crow may lead somewhere in paint or print. I can see some possibilities from the detailed drawing I’ve made.

I’ve made quite a few paintings of my own with animals in them now, including one of Laura’s lovely whippet, and really enjoy looking at other painters interpretations. I’ve enjoyed American painter Ann Craven’s colourful bird paintings in recent years (below), and feel a connection with her direct approach to her subject matter, and painterly approach.

I'm pretty passionate about animals, but not as much as Laura, who specialises in animal portraits. She has a real knack of capturing the individual character of her subjects. She has a great website which I've attached a link to below which really showcases her considerable photography skills and love for her subjects. You can also contact Laura there if you wish to commssion a photograph of your own pet.

http://www.petsinpearls.co.uk/

The Return Of The MAC

I managed to get down to Cannon Hill Park today to visit the newly refurbished MAC (Midlands Arts Centre). It’s great to see the place open again, as it showcases such a huge variety of interesting, varied and alternative arts events. This includes live music, theatre, cinema, and exhibitions, as well as all the workshops and classes that it runs.

I have to be honest however, I was disappointed with the new refurb in relation to my own interest in the visual arts. There used to be about four different exhibition spaces, each with very different work at the same time. They weren’t great spaces, but they were used really well. I’ve seen some great photography, painting and textiles exhibitions over the years there, often in the same afternoon. But now there is only one exhibition space, The Arena Gallery, that was open-plan, which I suspect will limit the type of work shown. I felt pretty gutted. So, it was a welcome return to all the other stuff, but it felt like a loss for people like me who enjoy such exhibitions, and also a loss of opportunity for artists in the region to possibly show their work.

Here's a link:

www.macarts.co.uk

Alan Sillitoe 1928-2010

I was saddened to hear of the death of Alan Sillitoe in April 2010 at the age of 82, as I’ve enjoyed and been influenced by the themes in many of his novels over the years, particularly ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’, with its story of working class escapism from the drudgery and hard labour of the factory floor in post-war Britain. Sillitoe’s and also Stan Barstow’s ‘A Kind Of Loving’ were important novels for me in their sympathetic portrayal of ordinary working class lives in Northern England that never slipped into sentimentality or cliché. They always felt true and authentic.

They were working class writers writing about working class lives. This was important to me and their example gave me confidence in an interest I had in painting about some of my own experiences of the working class culture I grew up in. This eventually lead to me painting for several years about the ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Mornings’ in the West Yorkshire towns of Dewsbury and Batley, where I found myself living on and off for several years.

'John',

pastel on paper, 1992, Shaun Morris

Sillitoe’s ‘The Loneliness of The Long Distance Runner’ is my favourite story by him, which is a short story written as a monologue of a Borstal boy who finds mental freedom only during his daily cross-country run. He tells of the theft that led to his incarceration, and ‘the outlaw death’ that his father died; then he deliberately loses a prestigious cross-country race to spite the values of the authorities. I really love its anger and the rebellion of the boy’s act.

The film starring Tom Courteney is also great, as is of course the brilliant ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’ with Albert Finney. Although the latter can appear a little dated, it still possesses a real crackle and fizz thanks to the brilliant performances and the direction of Karl Reisz, and of course the magnificent Johnny Dankworth soundtrack.

Changes and Alterations...

White Daffodils in Red Round Vase,

oil on canvas, 120 x 120cms, 2010

After my recent 'Six Hours in the Studio' I decided to re-paint and alter that particular painting quite drastically. It's typical really and serves me right. I often have to live with a painting for a long time before I'm sure I want to share it with an audience, but here I am trying to keep the blog stimulating and varied for the occassional person who may stumble upon it.

I also thought those photos on that blog were a bit mechanical as a way of illustrating some aspects of my practise. A video would have been a much better idea...which I am incidently working on in relation to my 'Audience' commission at JCC. It's only been two years in the editing suite, and it's only going to be about twenty minutes, and I'm not sure it will be that thrilling even, but I'll keep you updated. I hope to post it on the website portfolio.