Thistle do nicely...

There are lots of people out there.

Some you remember forever, some you have trouble registering even whilst you're talking to them ( I'm thinking bus enthusiasts, cardigan designers, Young Conservatives etc.)

Some are pleasing to the eye, some have the face of a dropped pie but pretty much everyone is fascinating if you look at them properly, and listen to their story.

Just occasionally you bump into someone who has the whole deal and then some.

Enter Ivana Van der Fluff ( not entirely sure that's her real name ) who, it's fair to say, is not exactly backward in coming forward.

She struck me as a walking celebration of the confidence (and courage) it takes to be whichever version of yourself you choose to be, unaffected by those who shake their heads as you shimmy past in a cloud of feline indifference.

She told me that there had been two things she had always wanted to do, but the business of having a responsible career, being a grown up and generally conforming to all the subtle expectations of those around us had somehow pushed her ambitions to the back of the queue.

But not any more...

One was to strut her stuff on the Burlesque stage, and the other was to abseil down a building.

So, for anyone who ever wondered if they should let their alter ego out to run about with it's pants on it's head, here's your answer.

We decide who we are and what we do and the fear of disapproval is of no consequence if we are true to ourselves.

Those who matter will not mind, and those who mind do not matter.

When I asked Ivana if she had fulfilled both her ambitions it came as no surprise to find that she had indeed abseiled down the outside of a tall building.

And Ivana being Ivana, had done it in feathers, boots and corsets.

Epic...

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  

The Right to Bare Arms

I don't understand.

No really, I haven't got a clue.

Not even a geriatric glow worms arse of an idea to light the moles-pocket darkness of my total and utter incomprehension.

Throughout the passage of my disorganised, rudderless, futtering existence there has been one comforting precept that I have come to rely on;  that if I repeat any activity to which I bear some small aptitude a sufficient number of times, then I become tolerably proficient at it.

It's a strategy that has served me well in many areas:

Riding a bicycle, brushing my teeth without poking my eye out, avoiding IKEA, impersonating a stoat, getting fired from proper jobs, making tiny mice out of apple pips, buying shoes that don't fit.

All these, and more, are areas where I feel completely capable because I have done them so many times that I no longer have to think about them.  They just sort of happen automatically.

I rely on them.

Soooo.... why in the name of God's underpants do I periodically lose the ability to make anything even vaguely convincing appear on the evil, taunting piece of overstarched bedlinen propped up on the easel in front of me?

I mean, what if I suddenly forgot how to drive a car half way round Oxford circus, or had a momentary lapse of cognisance whilst doing something crucial involving a step ladder, a bucket of angry gerbils and an unusually large Swiss army knife?

I live in the cosy reassurance that such things are unlikely to happen, so why does the one ability I've devoted more time and attention to than any other suddenly decide to pack it's Speedo's and buzz off on its holidays without leaving a forwarding address?!

By now you may have gathered that the current bid for artistic gold has not gone according to plan.

It's like turning up at the Olympics only to find you've forgotten your PE kit.

It should be so simple: Paint the chairman's portrait as a present for his birthday.

I've worked with him for years, he's a perfect sitter, and I get a pretty fair likeness of his more reflective, personal side in a couple of takes.

Bung in his favourite winebar and a few memento's and the job's all but done.

All but for the foreground figure which steadfastly refuses to resemble a woman in a sleeveless dress and persists in looking like a haddock that's swallowed a hunchback.

Some days you just feel like sitting at the bottom of the garden eating worms.

At least I know how to do that....

        

Finished

Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Woman

It's odd,  but reassuring,  how paintings seem to sort themselves out if you let them.

This one is far from finished yet,  but it's on it's way.

If you recall,  I'd made a pig's protrusion of it by trying to fake it using old photo's as reference instead of basing it on a real person.

Long story short:
Quick trip to a Burlesque show in town, friendly fabulous dancers,  a studio session involving feathers, glitter,  fishnets and a spontaneous symposium on the failure rate of merkin attachment products and I had everything (and more ) that I needed to complete this painting and a whole bunch more.

By now you will have gathered that this whole process is to do with so much more than making pictures.

It's about meeting some pretty amazing people,  being witness to their stories  and celebrating the magic and brilliance of their take on the world.

All I have to do is link up the themes and colour them in.

This, then, is the story so far of a painting that feels like it would finish itself if I stopped painting it.

Without giving it all away, I wanted to paint something around the idea of the point at which we choose to identify ourselves.

Do we identify ourselves when we are young and beautiful, or when we're rich with experience?

Do we stop the clock at the bit that represents us at our best, and if so, when is that?

Youthful and desirable or old and dribbly, it's all part of the same story.

Maybe it's good to hold onto the evidence of our lives as we go along, so that one day, when some well intentioned teen is tucking the acrylic blanket round our boney knees, we can take out the scrapbook of how fabulous we once were and beat the sanctimonious smirk off their face with it.

Time is a thief that steals your future while you're looking for the keys of the here and now, so make each day a burlesque show in your heart.

Just mind your merkin...

The Fickle Finger of Fate

A heartwarming tale of kindness and coincidence that should awaken the dormant doormouse of joy in even the most hardened old heart:

Being of an artistic temperament, and prone to moments of absent -mindedness due to the kaleidoscopic nature of the creative mind, I managed to lose my backpack one evening.

(Ok, fair enough, you're right, I had been overserved at the bar...)

Anyway, the crucial part is that it contained one of my moleskin notebooks, which in turned contained the last twelve month's ideas, dreams, sketches, personal futterings and contact details - not to mention my diary of the time I spent in France planting the Wireman.

Choked I was.

Fast forward two or three weeks and I'm having a pint with an artist chum (couldn't afford absinthe, even though it makes the parts grow longer ) and in a moment of Karmic harmony I bought the barmaid a drink.

When Artist chum questioned why I was chucking the currency around when we had barely enough for our own lubrication, I told him the tale of the lost notes, and how by spreading a little pleasantness I might offset the fact that my precious book was lost forever, abandoned to a hideous fate, and in all probability being used to line some miscreant's ferret's cage.

The Good Bit:

Artist chum then recalled a mysterious, garbled message he'd received, which had mentioned my name.

A quick check through his call history, contact with the caller, a trip across town and The Tale of the Lost Bag comes to a happy, misty eyed conclusion involving a charming, thoughtful taxi driver, a scrawled number in the back cover and a great deal of coincidental luck.

Or was it....

(Dramatic pause)

So, here's few sketches from it that might otherwise be lost on the storm tossed tides of misfortune.

Sorry about the florid verbosity of the epistle - I've been reading the biography of Dickens and it rubs off a bit.