Peek a Boo

The Nude

Yes you caught us staring at you Grace Jones

I’m about to embark on my first nude painting. A friend has asked me to capture her body before she ages another year and I’m very flattered. I immediately thought of Dali’s nude paintings and Grace Jones because my mate has an eccentric personality, and then Freud’s uncompromising brush strokes flashed in my mind, so what is the best way to paint a nude?

Stunning Dali painting with an equally stunning title 'Dream caused by Flight of a Bee around a Pomegrant' 

We all have an idea of what we look like naked, but how is our birthday suit viewed by others and should we care? What does the naked rambler think as he avoids prickly bushes and tour groups while strolling through the English countryside? Can any of us look as iconic as Demi Moore in both her pregnant and painted suit for Vanity Fair magazine, or as poised as Josephine Baker?

Josephine looking demure

The nude painting has always fascinated me. I acknowledge that the idea of capturing someone without the identity of their clothes is a purest ideal in a physical world where hairstyles, grooming, tattoos and scars give a nod to a lifestyle and naked character.

Annabel joins Rattler in the nude

I’m keen for the image not to be exclusively associated with sexual identity, there is no point in denying that our aesthetics are judged and that a naked body can arouse and tug at our carnal desires. When viewing a contemporary naked portrait, I can spot the visitors who shuffle along uneasily in case others suspect their viewing affects another sensory organ.

Wen Wu pays feminine attention to those shoes

The subject’s pose and prop should be considered. I am drawn to the subtle use of shoes in Wen’s portrait title Magnolias and equally drawn to the lazy pose in Edward Weston’s Nude on Sand because who doesn’t want to lie in the sun and feel the heat on their body without worrying about tan lines and wondering eyes.

Edward Weston's 'Nude on Sand' has a timeless appeal

This year’s winner of the BP Portrait Prize is a beautiful example of balancing truth with dignity, if I can capture just a fraction of that viewing experience, I’ll have done my job.

1st prize for Aleah Chapin

 

Life after the Olympics

The end now what?

When people who had never been to the Caribbean embraced their Jamaican side

How do I get back to life after the Olympics? Ahh those blissful two weeks which went like this.. Wake up look at my canvas and then go switch on the TV and consume some gymnastics, dressage (tip toeing horses), a bit of Clare Balding on the swimming, then Adonis bodies heating up the track in the evenings.  Aaahhh the life.

Everything was gold, post boxes our medal table and the return of Wispa Gold

The Olympic fire has been extinguished and I have to admit I’m nostalgic for those days, because the news was filled with gold dust instead of rail fare rises, but another thing is ending in my life... Game of Thrones.

Daenerys Targaryen rising from the flames with a new pet.

Yes I’m talking about the medieval fantasy novel turned HBO series on Sky Atlantic. On my Kindle rests the last book in the series which I downloaded last night and I’m scared because ever since Daenerys Targaryen  was reborn from the flames with not one but three dragons adorning her body, I’ve been sucked into a world where many of my favourite characters have been dealt quite harshly by the writer George Martin and I’m desperate for a good pay off after investing in all 5 books (with an average of 600 pages per novel) in the series.

All together now. SHHHHHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTT

That’s the problem with investing in something... the return? Great returns belong  The Wire – time well spent including a midnight dash to Piccadilly’s HMV to purchase box set number 4 after finishing series 3 at 22:38pm. Pay Off yes 100%

But I do hope Game of Thrones will give me a better return than our GB relay team.

Culture Crush: Prometheus

Two weeks have passed since I watched Ridley Scott’s film Prometheus and that muscle headed alien has left an imprint. I have obsessively searched for review and analysis, the best I’ve found on blogpost Cavalorn's Journal. Reviews on Rotten Tomatoes have been pored over to find kinship or scorn in the case of ‘Rubbish!’ ‘Frustrating film of the year’ and ‘One dimensional characters’, typed disgruntled audiences due to the many unanswered questions. But it’s the holes in the screenplay that I’ve fallen into and enjoyed the extra curriculum aspect of the whole experience.

Prometheus asks more questions than he answers

Let us consider the topic matter...and realise that it would be IMPOSSIBLE for Ridley to present all the answers to the questions thrown up, because the film is fundamentally a quest for humankind’s origins; which falls into three main categories: Evolution, God or something else.

The future's looking rather porky

Is the monkey in the zoo an ancestor or were we moulded from clay by the man-maker in the sky? The wildcard theory could be any episode of the Outer Limits or scenario in the brilliant head mess book from neuroscientist David Eagleman’s Sum Tales from the Afterlife.

Serious crush on the black material

I was mesmerised by a stylish Prometheus promo cover on Dazed and Confused featuring the lead actor Noomi Rapace, and its dark other worldly aspect.

Piss Christ by Serrano

Is finding out the origins of humankind the ultimate life quest? It has been approached in many religious art forms from Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam in Sistine Chapel through to the controversy surrounding Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ, but I struggled to find metaphorical or evolution art with the same impact as art inspired by a belief in God.

How can this be captured in art?

Where is the beautiful art which addresses the nature of the universe? Will this change in the future as our society becomes more secular?

Gina Czarnecki's form and reform movement evokes... 

Bare-faced?

The football season is well and truly over and I'm glad.  Yep I said it! Because there’s nothing like being a Londoner and not supporting the London team who won the European Champions league. Add the injury of having to drive around instead of over fans on walkabouts with blue flags jeering at everyone as if they had replaced Drogba and scored the decisive penalty.

I decided to walk when I saw this bus approaching.

Sounds like sour grapes, yes! It’s a sour vineyard and definitely a non vintage year for the reds, which got me thinking of the main twitter trend in London on the night of that Chelsea victory... #BayerToWin. How un-patriotic and London-sceptic it seems we had become, or simply we hate some their squad (coughing C**e and T**ry?) Call it what you want but it got me thinking of disappointment and the ways we as a society are allowed to express it.

I made a grudging Facebook post, but how truthful are we at presenting ourselves visually?

In song, Yes, of course there’s Ceelo’s amusing ‘F**k You’ however Marvin Gaye’s single ‘when did you stop loving me, when did I stop loving you ‘ has to be one of the best outpouring of real life ever written and sung.  

But very rarely are images posted by individuals of their own bad hair days, a spell of adult acne, a portrait of disappointment at not getting the job or unrequited love never realised.

What favourite thing did Jill Greenberg take from Gwen Stefani?

In the ‘now culture’ are we expected to snap back from bust to boom in record time, to have that stiff upper lip when it wants to tremble and show how shiny happy people we are at all times?

That’s why I love Frieda Kaholo’s truthful statement in her piece titled A Few Small Nips (Passionately in Love) when broken hearted by her husband’s affair with her sister.

Frieda Kaholo lets her paintbrush do the talking.

But is it narcissistic to willingly reflect every emotion and face to the world including the less positive ones?  Or is there room for a little more humanity without the whitewash or the Photoshop?

Yue Minjun magnificent Massacre at Chios

Weakness for Muses

Hello, this is my new blog, which will cover Art, Culture, Politics and basically anything that influences my creative output, lingers on my conscience or just amuses me.

David Bowie as Tina Turner in Labyrinth



I’ve just finished my latest maze painting which was triggered by a clip in HBO’s Homeland title sequence and appealed to a personal fascination with the foliaged web after watching the movie Labyrinth as a child. Exhibition dates for the maze paintings will be posted soon. 

"Carrie, he's behind you!" Homeland title sequence



So what to paint next?  Well, I’m in the early stages of a new collection which has been inspired by an article I read on the artist Prunella Clough. It noted her unusual attention to aspects of urban life that are mostly overlooked but it was this line "most 20th century art ignores any direct reference to the 20th century environment, it's as if our paintings wish to be nowhere."
Wow, I was guilty of failing to recognise the 21st century in my own art practice. Ok, the time has come to approach my phobia of electrical plugs and modern city landscapes that are currently replaced with fields and blurry backgrounds.

Prunella Clough painting those fiddly aspects of fishing life.

Fear not surreal worlds of Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte, I will probably return to you, but for now I must paint a collection which is placed in this time and deals with this urban environment.

Another recent influence following a tweet on Twitter during Trayvon Martin’s ‘Million Hoodie March’ led me to the photographer Dwayne Rodgers and his ongoing project The Black Vernacular - a fascinating photographic work which feeds on contributions from the general public and real-life portraits showing the varied lifestyles of African American lives and not just the stereotype, so I hope my sitting muses also contribute to a documentation of London lives. 

Monica on the left - The Black Vernacular

Final thought: The Artist's Wardrobe

Since leaving the 9-5 grind, something strange has happened to my sense of style and dress... it has vanished and been replaced with a new uniform I do not understand or even want to look in the mirror at.