'.......or less
Edward Gorey is a hundred this February, or would be if he wasn’t 25 years dead.
To celebrate the one hundred years since Edward Gorey’s birth, Linda Hughes and Andrew Baker are curating an exhibition in Edinburgh of artists’ work which, I imagine, will reflect somehow on his influence.
I’m thinking what this means as they have asked me to take part and submit a piece for the show.
My good friend and colleague, Martin Ursell, is altogether a much better person at keeping in touch with people. He heard from Joanna, a graduate student of ours 
from a few years ago, that my presence on social media had increased DRAMATICALLY. Which made us both laugh. It’s only funny if you know I don’t look at computers, or I didn’t until this contemporary version of the plague, Covid-19, came along.
When Lockdown was introduced I opened the cupboard where the computer hibernates, blew the dust off its cover and brought it blinking into day. [Read more…]
Here be snaps of m’Berlin performance,
“Pop Jackson’s Bollock”
Took your advice to heart
(not to be boring…..)
You’ll see
I found a handy help-mate and muso to play along.
Tho’ t’was touch & go whether I would or no
made me anxious
couldn’t say as much because it had to be fun, where free-spirits roam etc., [Read more…]
The way the 
world appears…, to Gaston Bachelard everything ordinary has an extraordinary something.
Years ago, back in the day of the independent book shop, while browsing in one (opposite, what was then, the Czechoslovakian embassy) I came across The Poetics of Space. The paperback English translation had been recently published by Beacon Press. I’d never heard of it.
I bought the book for its title (after the standard test: – open a page at random, begin reading anywhere, see if I want to keep going.., try same a few more times – if all good – buy). Eventually, one or two studios later, I got around to opening it (again).
Whatever prompted me to start reading Bachelard’s book, I must have been primed and ready because it changed me – the Poetics of Space gave me, quite simply and dramatically, a new view of the world, other ways to perceive things, tools to open up my thinking.
It’s written in plain, clear and direct language. Which doesn’t mean it’s good for a quick read. He gives you so much to chew on. It’s so packed with ideas it can take me an age to get through a page. Often a few lines of simple prose contain so much for me to ponder – setting off trains of thought which might play out for days! [Read more…]
This is t
he most recent addition to “Identity Parade”, the series devoted to Fernando Pessoa. It is one of a set of 20 x 24 inch canvases which I began in 2013. The others came together quite quickly, but not this one. Because I wanted both to tease out and impose an image (or three) it involved a deal of trial and error to try to find some kind of balance…. Why the make up of a picture should have overly complex intentions is questionable. But whatever the reasoning behind it, the painterly task I (sometimes) give myself is to see whether an absurd set of criteria can hold together and still work as a painting. I think this one does, it has a strange power – maybe, if you can bear with its narrative aspect, understand the characters involved and are able to stomach density, richness and colour – then it works.
oil on canvas
61 cm x 51 cm
2016