Hello Kitty

We got this little fella today through a friend of a friend who has to leave him behind for a new life in Florida. The kittens name is Ronin, and he's already got us wrapped around his little furry paw.

Artifact-tales of an Antiquarian-Gods and Monsters

Completed in the fall of 2004, Gods and Monsters was very much informed by more than a dabble with dark magiks and having read too many Dennis Wheatley novels as a teenager. Still living in the UK at the time, and having dallied briefly with a coven in places called Thornton Hough, I was immersed in the Crowley Tarot, John Fowles the Magus, Colin Wilson,The Mysteries, Eastern mysticism, occasional headonistic weekends in Amsterdam and a late night tryst that led me down a very solipsistic, self destructive path indeed.

In all manner of ways, Gods and Monsters was trying to make sense of it all, examining if their were pre-ordained forces and wisdoms at play, such as astrological motifs, religious rites and the Arcana, or if it was merely arcane, and influenced by ones own psychosis,the dirge and the vampires, we surround ourself with during the unravelling of daily existence.

Elicited as part of my 'Dream Orphans' series, and like most of my works of the period-sold on Ebay for a song-the piece has since become notable for its inclusion on the cover of Peter J Carrols 'The Apophenian' as well as being the theme and title for my retrospective book.


Painted in a week with Acrylics, I'm still very proud of it, its an important work, and continues to be one of my most sought after pieces at shows.

Signed reproduction prints of Gods and Monsters are available from my website HERE.

And Another Thing...

This weekly article will be an opportunity for me to vent about something:

"Tyrants have not yet discovered any chains that can fetter the mind."Charles Caleb Colton



I've heard it said that art and commerce will never make good bedfellows-the corporate homogenization of what is a cerebral, spiritual and sometimes visceral occupation always seeming incongruous amongst the pie chart machinations of the boardroom.
One might think then that the world of advertising-or graphic design, might at least be a fitting agent for a modicum of creativity within that geography.
I realise my age may be showing here, but when I began my tenure as a designer, some twenty odd umpteen years ago, the artists studio, consisted of hefty art boards, slide rulers, rotring pens,scalpels and paste up.In some quarters, hot metal type was still in use, and anything you speculated was composed with good old fashioned magic markers and balls out talent.
At this point, I'm want not to come on like a granddad at the disco here, but I saw my first computer in a studio in '88. After that, everything began to change, and if you were not prepared to pull with the punches, and get with the 'program', then you were a redundant Luddite-a dinosaur relic of an age when being in advertising had something of a elite romantic sophistication to it*
Nowadays of course, everyone is a designer-Kids working at Blockbuster can knock off a a little bit of Flash with some nifty clip art and Photoshop knowledge, and can invigorate a Myspace page to award status.
Whilst online, companies like Crowdspring, demean the process further, by providing a catalyst between client and artist, where you provide several designs along with a million others, in the hopes of winning a lottery of a miserable $200.

Is it any wonder then, in such a milieu, that there are so many maggots on the periphery, ready to exploit the process, and treat artists as expendable commodity. Of course, the industry has never been short of bastards-the same could be said of any corporate setting, where a stabbed back comes as regular and as iced as your morning mocca latte. And yet, personal experience with this-and believe me when I tell you that there are tales I could relate of the most evil 'low ball' personal affrontary-all leads me to believe that with the advent of things like Craigslist, the continuing recession, the ubiquity of designers, and the death knell of the unions in the 90's, the rabid dog is off the leash and there is nobody to watch it.
Creativity nowadays is perceived as nothing more than pixels on a screen, terminology replacing what was once a highly regarded position diminished to the moniker 'Mac Monkey'.

It is an age when true draftsmanship no longer carries any currency-where lofty titles such as 'developer' hold the lions share in terms of pay scale, for what amounts to typing code into a Joomla template.

And whilst I have no aspiration to adopt a working knowledge of CSS this or PHP that, I could if I wished, the difference therein being then, whether said developer could ever hope to do the same if asked to do what I can.

I'll leave you with a memory I have of a designer I worked with a few years ago-an old school artist of some advancing years from the halcyon days, who came aboard to work up some marker visuals for a formidable campaign for laminate flooring.
After several days of work, he produced what were the slickest hand rendered ,clever ads I have ever seen, securing the client against agencies who had used the usual computer generated trickery.

The story doesn't end there-my friend, upon handing his invoice to the director was greeted by apoplectic consternation-"You want how much for three days work?" was his retort.

To which my friend paused momentarily with a sort of here we go again look upon his face and replied...

"Three days work boss, but a life times experience."


*For further exposition see an episode of Mad Men.

Gough Medicine-Work

'Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.'
Aldous Huxley

Notes from an easel-part 24 (technically 25)

I worked some more on the new piece-finessing the details of the skull in layers, repainting the dolls face to give it that more Victorian look of the lips placed virtually beneath the nose, and developing the hare (brain) character.

I decided it was time to work the background, in the past the skulls have all been floating platforms in a turbulent sky, but this piece felt like it needed to be compressed into a space, the horror of confronting something larger than life in a claustrophobic setting, and so I've placed it in an old attic playroom. As this painting evolves, it becomes more and more of a statement as some requiem for childhood-a loss of innocence.
I'm liking the process of working on the heavily primed surface more, although I'm still not convinced-there is something to be said for the way I was working before, a smoother finish, darker and muted from working on virtually raw canvas, which no doubt, Francis Bacon would contest with a screaming pope or two, were he still alive.

Notes from an easel part 22-a return to your regular programming

This is my third stab at this piece, which originally found itself as almost a throwaway concept, about the absurdity of dressing death up. Of course I felt I'd said it much better with Axiom, so this was my satirical approach, almost an Alfred E Neuman version from MAD magazine. Of course, whenever I'd show the piece at events, it got a lot of attention, so I've finally decided to work it up properly, with the exception that I've developed it to a further level, and may include an additional dimension to it.

Anyway, here is the sketchbook version, with the rough markings on canvas below. Incidently, when my daughter-Emma-first saw the piece, she said the little bunny characters painted on the skull looked like something called 'Miffy'. My intention had been to do a Hello Kitty style character, but thought I'd create my own . Apparently someone got there before me. How bizarre.


Following on from Sundays Exhibit at Thumbprint, there was a very nice video which popped up on my Facebook from the event. Thankfully, I appear in the background, for a few seconds (although I was interviewed that day, which should surface sometime soon) its a lovely momento.

The Video is Here

Making Thumbprints

It has been noted-and not just by myself-that if their is any art scene at all in San Diego, then it is largely driven by tourists looking for souvenir tat. However, if the turnout at Thumbprint (arguably, San Diego's premier gallery for emerging talent) is anything to go by, then there is an audience out there for something more than diluted seascapes and blooms, because I am glad to report that the patronage was healthy and enthusiastic throughout the day./
My indebted thanks to all of the lovely people who stopped by to meet and greet, I am always grateful for the support, the interest and encouragement.
In particular, my thanks to Johnny, Nomad, my wife Lani, Christine and her family, Carolyn, Mark, Earl and Ernie,Katinka, and especially to our new friends, Diana and Jeff for the lovely company during dinner.

I am however duly exhausted, and barely capable of another syllable, so I shall leave you with the inevitable picture post.(Apologies for the blurriness, my camera spazzed on its setting.)