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.