Thursday 29 October 2015

Forty Five Lives now available as a print on Etsy



This one is the first in a series of mass portraits detailing the lives of a few people I have met.



To see Etsy Shop

Tuesday 27 October 2015

Bloomsbury Festival

Here's Ben at Light Up Store Street on Friday evening. The fire and water fountains were amazing. The Bloomsbury Festival 2015 came with a few problems....the main one being that The Mary Ward House who had promised rooms to several artists in June cancelled their offer only a few days before the festival. I was moved to Senate House, but the hundreds of programs that were printed up had specified me and other artists being elsewhere. At seven o'clock on Friday evening, the boards arrived to hang the work up, but there was no one to assemble the boards, so I returned at ten in the morning on Saturday just two hours before the opening to hang the work. I would not wish to repeat that. The next day, I took the paintings to Brunswick Square to show them in a tent. Still, I met a few nice people and sold a few works. 

Saxophone in a Smokey Room


Saxophone in a smokey room sipping dark red cocktails....smooches between sets. Seated around little round tables, the couples cross-legged quietly confide in the music. 

Monday 26 October 2015

Berlin Summer 2015

We had a fabulous time in Berlin. We had a rough list of museums to pop into and cultural stopping points, but all I really wanted was to meet some friendly people....and that's what we found.  That was the best part. It was the groovy day that we walked from Alexander Platz to Gorlitzer Park. First, the computer museum....Ben was in Heaven. I was in Hell. a pixelated funeral of retro games back in the days of monotone table tennis. I looked at a map of the world that corresponded with cities that offer degrees in game design. Interesting.
We strolled on to Karl Marx Allee and marveled at the grand buildings. From there, a tram to Freidrichshain. A cool hotel with lampshades made of shredded magazines.  A suicide circus nightclub that looked like a jazzed-up outdoor climbing park. The East Side Gallery teaming with people and their cameras. We took a breather ducking out towards the river Spree and found a floating youth hostel boat. They had a sign outside that eloquently meant "Piss off if you aren't staying here. " And there was the Red Castle Bridge....Oberbaum Bridge. Beautiful and whimsical. We crossed the bridge and listened to the buskers strumming with their hats out. A young girl was in tears having some kind of drug induced crisis. And then, we found a big bag of spray paint just sitting there. For a moment, I thought," It's meant for us." But then, a guy came down a big ladder. As it happened, he was painting a four story mural for Nike. A professional graffiti artist. Then a ping pong beer garden. An Indian meal, a kiwi popsicle and Gorlitzer Park where we met Franzi and Hendrick from The Blue Ones. Ben was in raptures as the place where they play frisbee is a bowl and he thought that a spaceship had landed there to create it. He was commenting on the frisbee players...."That guy is a jelly belly. How did he catch that?....That guy has been playing since birth...." And he was right. There is a guy in Gorlitzer Park who plays Frisbee everyday rain, snow, or shine. We joined in and chatted with our new friends until past midnight. Hendrick was punctuating his paragraphs with  a set of sit ups every five minutes. My first taste of Club Mate Soda. Good stuff.