Showing posts with label brighton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brighton. Show all posts

Tuesday, 6 July 2010

Old



My class' graduation website from last year has long since gone deadlink, but a found a cached version and screenshotted and reassembled my page, so I've at least got a record of it to keep. I was really pleased with how my paintings looked on there- really big and lush. The gdi09 identity was designed by Connie Dickson, Aneel Kalsi and Joe Porter, but until someone reminds me I can't remember who built the website.

I honestly can't get my head around how rapidly this past year has shot by!

Tuesday, 13 October 2009

Scott





This is an old portrait of Scott, my housemate of the past 3 years, painted while the two of us were having a bit of an artistic painty session in our tiny back yard on a glorious sunny day way back in spring or early summer 2008. The painting stayed displayed on that spot where it was born, braving the worst elements, until we moved out a couple of months ago, at which point I took a few quick pics of it for the first time, before snapping him up. I realised I'd become quite attached to it, possibly more so than to any other image I've ever produced, come to think of it. I guess this is purely sentimental, due to the painting's link to the two great years spent in the house, but it's also partly, I think, because it's one of those very rare pictures of mine that was produced in a completely unconstrained, unselfconcious situation: splashing a bit of paint around on an old bit of wood just for the fun of it, listening to a bit of Taj Mahal in the sun.

The white outline on the figure is not my doing, but rather an inevitable vandalistic result of leaving an old piece of wood in the back garden for 18 months. However, it was annoying me a lot so for my own satisfaction I've crudely photoshopped the spraypaint out in the top image. Much better.

I recall that Scott and I vowed to have a painting session like this every week or so from then on, and Nathen, jealous at our paint-date, was going to join us next time. Inevitably though, 'proper' work and such took over and the time never came round again.

Monday, 12 October 2009

Degree Show












Way back in the stuttering summer I had my degree show down in Brighton (top). A brilliant end to three years, and incredibly satisfying to see my work up alongside that of my coursemates on the shiny white walls.

The paintings are taken from two documentary illustration projects I'd produced in the preceding months, one based on the UK's disgustingly abundant vacant property, and the second (the rightmost trio) based on the construction of a new sports stadium. The latter formed a book relating Darwin's theories on the struggle for life to modern humanity's interactions with the planet.

...of course, with the paintings separated from the books they are produced for, this all falls a bit flat.

For our show at the Rag Factory off Brick Lane a month later, I dropped the Darwin paintings in favour of some smaller illustrations from a picture book, trying to show a bit more narrative. This show was also ace, particularly on the busy private view night. Everyone seemed to get very excited about the gallery's multi-coloured floor.