Big Dog

Illustrative 09 {Berlin}

I have been selected to show a number of drawings as part of ILLUSTRATIVE 09 in Berlin.

www.illustrative.de/

Several drawings from 'A Book Made of Tears' will be showing. So if you happen to be in Berlin this week, check it out.

FERRY

My Cup Runneth Over

King Harry Ferry exhibition up for the whole of August. A series of 10 paintings documenting the theme 'Vessel'. Made for the 2009 Embark: Ferry Art commission.

All hope and dreams kept within.

King Harry Ferry Exhibitions

The 2009 Embark ferry art exhibitions. In August this year I will have a month long show on the ferry. For more info on the project go to www.fotonow.org

serendipity

things you find on the studio floor.

something has to give

Our china skin can only hold so much

under

just keeping my head above water

Many of us are aware that some people are method actors, having to encompass all the emotion difficulties when playing at part. It seems that without noticing I have been making work about drowning and in the process, been drowning my self, financially, emotionally etc. So it is with this image that I currently am just about keeping my head above water. I cannot struggle like this forever - lets hope my story has a happy ending.

Tangents, Mallards and peoples heads

A ha! for the avid I'm periodical reader(s) there is some news, I have another blog. Peoples heads is a blog I am dedicating to drawings of peoples heads, faces and other bodily parts, above is Boris Johnston with what can only be described as a Mallard, I have no idea what that could mean.

small books

Ah well if I am going to post about that book I should really post about all the rest as well. This is a book made in one eight hour stint in truro cathedral, a panoramic drawing from one seat, on one piece of paper. (scaled down obviously) original 2m.

Excuse me while I digress

Coasters - an illustrated anthology, has just been released for general sale by Atlantic Press ltd. I have contributed to it with the above image and also I designed it. So if your interested to see more of it you can buy it from me at £8.50 or alternatively from Atlantic Press.

this is the sales blurb:

"it is unusual to come across an illustrated anthology which is so coherent and well choreographed. if as the artist joseph Beuys suggests, thinking is form, then this is a very thoughtful book, expressed through vibrantly drawn and written lines.
Here, poetry aligns both image and text far beyond the poems"

Valeria Melchioretto

nice.

Organs of Sense

In the way we talk about crying, it is often said that we are ‘moved to tears’ like it’s a small town outside Dorset; some strange emotion reassignment or at the very least to a greater place or space that we are not normally present in, so completely immersed are we, that it is impossible to think that it is within us, a part of us, a sensation that we truly inhabit, no – that’s just not British.

But maybe this is the answer, that tears are a physical manifestation of sensation, something that we all too often believe we posses, or are put on us ‘that film made me cry’ and so on, the truth is nobody really knows why we cry emotional tears, and maybe that is because we are so lost and distanced to the ‘now’, to the world, that we miss the obvious. Maybe its something that cannot be explained through science, of course we can dissect tears, induce tears and factualize about tears until we are blue in the face but so far we haven’t found anything concrete, because perhaps like religious / spiritual belief or art, science cannot pin it down, there is no answer. Nobody really knows why we believe in god. So strung up are we in trying to explain everything through this over used language, naming things, explaining things using limited culturally specific grunts known as words, that we could miss that alongside art, music and poetry, tears are a highly expressive form of communication as the English poet Abraham Cowley once wrote ‘Words that weep, and tears that speak.’

image by H.V Carter MD from Gray's Anatomy

The point of tears

Its been too long now since I last posted something, so here goes – this is a drawing from a set of drawings about crying. yes crying. I have been lucky enough to get some of my work published by Atlantic Press due for release in September/October time, the small hard-back book will be (hopefully) created from the same methodology as before, drawings on top of drawings, drawing out the story intuitively.

So I am going to attempt to post more based on my research into why we cry and what the point of them is.

I've been sleeping

It would appear i have not posted for some time, a strange but true fact. One might think this is because I am slack and that after finishing my MA I have done nothing - this is not the case. I can only apologise to anybody (if anybody) looking at this blog wanting more than biannual updates, although to be fair this blog is titled I'm Periodical, giving me at least a little leeway. perhaps.

so if nothing else I have been thinking about doing stuff

Exhibition

The exhibition is up and my MA is finished.

No, I do not know what I am doing.

working methods

I haven't taken any photos today so I decided to post my working methods, the whole drawing has been mainly based around classical sculpture. After sitting in an empty white room for a day without pencils or paper, I started to visualise pieces of sculpture I knew, and this is turn helped me construct the narrative.

I photocopied the sculptures I had visualized and then worked on them, then transferred them to the main drawing. nothing fascinatingly exciting about that I guess but nice to know peoples methods.

With all its promises and dangers

Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf has a line in it that describes Mrs Dalloways daughters future as, "acquiring a time of her own with all its promises and dangers". I like that idea a lot, that as you get older you acquire your own time, as if time is a self producing circle, in which you create your own circle, identical to the other but unable to exist in the same space.

I am nearing the end of the drawing and drawing nearer to completing the MA, the drawing has taken me about four weeks and it has grown into a companion of sorts, but it is odd to think that it will exist without me soon, that the drawing will acquire a time of its own, it already has in many ways. Drawing is an amazing medium for dealing with experience and experiences, if we allow the drawing to have a life of its own and just feed it daily.