Of Corsets Art...

Bingo!

Just found out I've bagged a gallery space in the centre of Bristol in August, so it's time to test this stuff on The Great Unwashed.

Whilst I've trialled some of these, I've held off having a one man show until I thought I was good enough, and had enough paintings to justify it.

Since I'm never going to match either criteria, I might as well force them on an unsuspecting world anyway, and be damned.

More info soon, but let's just say that the timing of it is significant, I'm planning it as a fundraising event, and I've got a clear idea of how I will judge it's success which will have nothing to do with painting, artists or the number of people who put comments about 'inter spatial dichotomies between that which is and that which is not' in the visitors book.

Your presence is requested, be it in person or online, and I'll do my best to make it a belter.

Watch this space, details to be announced, warm up your wallets.

You have about 10 weeks to think up a subsequent engagement...

In the meantime, here is a teasing detail from the latest in the Burlesque series.

Yes, the birds are goldfinches, so no smutty schoolboy comments about tits if you please.

Tsk! -  what are you lot like....

The eye of the beholder

It's easy to get lost in the clouds.

I've had the nose, and various other parts to which I'm extremely attached, to the grindstone lately.

All very grown up and responsible in a "look at me with the bill paying skills" kind of way, but it does have it's downside.

By the time I get round to The Next Big Important Painting I'm generally so banjaxed I spend the evening staring myopically at blank canvas like a lobotomised boy scout.

However, nobody said it would be easy, so on I press with a whopping great picture of a Burlesque Queen who has been poured into her corsets and clearly forgot to say 'when'.

You know the sort of thing; a symphony in black leather, feathers, very small trousers and a couple of squadrons of Goldfinches doing a synchronised flypast.

More of that anon...

In the meantime, I'd been asked to do a couple of personal, memento paintings.

Not the sort of things I would normally do, but of some importance to the people involved.

I am the world's worst at doing anything unless I have a deadline, so I decide to get these two out of the way first, so that I can concentrate on 'The Big Picture".

These are they:

John Higgs - wit, bon viveur and rascal  1936 - 2009

'Eclipse' - big friendly horse

It's easy to get caught up in the idea that art has to be about lofty, high flown ideas and challenging, ground breaking issues of social importance.

It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking that complexity and validity are sleeves on the same shirt, and that in order to have an impact we must be loud, outrageous and witnessed by crowds.

Both these paintings made their recipients cry.

Both are treasured.

Sometimes less is everything