These two only

Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.

To the left you see an easel, below a sketch of Chom, the officer's mess at Cranwell where I recently partied late into the night (bearing in mind of course my perpetual sobriety). As is often the case I have been to busy to write about what have been doing and so all the exciting events of the past week or so will remain an exciting mystery, after a fortnight of public arguments up and down the North Laine, hasty journeys by night across the coast, nights spent in wild self doubt and days basking in the cold light of financial reality I have emerged looking forward to a change of circumstance. Keep your eyes peeled for photos of the new studio and importantly a collaborative project with the Megan Cooke, previously presented in previous paintings-in-progress. I shall be attempting to convince the manager of the Drella Gallery that my our work is worth a show...

Amongst numerous other activities I recently enjoyed visiting the Sparks evening of short stories at Three and Ten in Brighton, James Burt's live reading of his short story 'A Bad place to stick your hand' was particularly enjoyable. I am sadly missing the Saatchi Gallery viewing of the new show of contemporary Chineese art due to every penny in my bank account being ear marked for the deposit on my new studio which I will also be neither able to heat effectively nor furnish until the new year. So its rice with onion and carrot for the next couple of weeks... I have no one but myself to blame seeing as I spent last weeks food money on a pot of Gesso primer. Enough of my chatter.

Almost as good as a rest.

The 100 artists for aids day event that I exhibtibited 'Impressions' (Megan's beautiful feet) at today proved rather a rewarding few hours.

Check out:

http://www.myspace.com/amyamity the myspace doesn't do her justice, pick an event that shes playing at, go along, support her with much cheering and whooping. It'll be well worth the trek.

http://www.treefrogillustration.co.uk/ really rather beautiful and funny wee things.

On returning I got on with sanding down plastered MDF (an experiment, stay posted; though if it fails this will be the last you hear of this mysterious activity...) and working on the bedham pieces, pics wont upload, keep your eyes peeled... So much has gone on over the last few days that I shan't even start to relay it. That be all.

Night on night, from floor to floor

The last week has passed with unnecessary speed, and as such I'm glad that in these last failing hours I have managed to take a massive step forward in the work I'm currently faffing about with. My Bedham pieces are progressing slowly in a physical sense but the lessons I'm learning from approaching the brick work, plays of light and smooth skin tones of the model are many...

To distract myself from getting overly fussy with the painting I'm listening to an audio book of Dawkins' The God Delusion; I don't have much time to read at the mo and so having things read to me is preferable to repeating my own over played music collection to myself. I'm also musing on the way in which squirrels run after seeing a neat row of footprints in the snow this morning (I was at the RAF base in Cranwell; I think Brighton endured cold rain in place of the light snowflakes I enjoyed this morning).

Priorities

A message of personal castigation...I made the decision to spend most of this weeks food budget on fifteen quids worth of beautiful paper, then I left it at Brighton station. This is a public appeal for the return of said paper...I hope it's being used well where ever it is.

C'est la vie eh?

Miss Rosy Carrick (http://www.rosycarrick.co.uk/), from last weekend

Today I cannot even speak

Thought I saw someone I know well in the street today and it struck me a mighty ole mental blow hence the title. Im particularly ineloquent today. Paint is going on well. Messing about with different priming. Landscapes may be in the pipeline.

link: http://www.myspace.com/zoecello if you havent listened already.

A stroke of good fortune

The excitement of making a well placed brushstroke defies adequate words. Honestly.

Phil Colins and the sewing machine.

The title is not the name of a pitch for a particularly disappointing children's book but the motley medley of musical accompaniment to this evenings creative melee in the studio.

With the revelation that someone, in fact up to three someones, maybe even four have read my blog I really should improve the quality of the written content but seeing as that would detract from doing the work Id otherwise be writing about I shall leave it at images today. Of course I could have followed that philospohy to its logical conclusion and just not written this blog but we live in an age of instant communication where we feel the need to instantly communicate whether we need to say something or not. We feel that even our silence should be commented on, just so people know that we're too busy to let them know what we're doing. So I thought Id pen the comment anyway as an ironic way of presenting a little piece of social commentary for you to dwell upon. Pretencious you say? Im a painter.

"Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving wordy evidence of the fact." George Eliot

Soup and Turpentine

That's the unique olfactory signature of my studio at the moment not, I must stress, a serving suggestion.

Something to do with your Sunday:

Jake and Rosy in the Lanes

Sunday 16th November 11:00am – 4:00pm

To celebrate its first anniversary the Brighton Art gallery Art@ Taylor Made will be hosting a drawing session in which Jake Spicer (me...) will be painting a portrait of Brighton Poet Rosy Carrick (www.rosycarrick.co.uk) live in the gallery. Everybody and anybody is welcome to drop by!

Art @ Taylor Made Brighton Square The Lanes Brighton BN1 1HD
http://www.artattaylormade.co.uk/

Here's last nights work, not very exciting yet, but just you wait...

Scratches in the sky

not too exciting yet, but keep eyes peeled...

This Sunday (16th) I'll be painting Rossy Carrick in Art @ Taylor Made in Brighton, heres a wee sketch to whet the appetite.

What All The Rabbit Are Doing...

New post format, primarily to avoid unessesaryly prologed prosaic pratteling.

I'm just going to note things I have seen today, things that Id recomend, and things that I created.

Today:

http://rosycarrick.blogspot.com/ well worth a nose, dark and rich and beautiful.

http://www.thejoycollective.co.uk/sabotage/forthcoming.html saw this last night, the last performance (ever I am told), watch out for anything else from Zoe Hincks in future.

A little 007 to as light relief and finaly, from me...

A little perspective

Blimey, what a week, and what a day. Ive just got back to my studio after a jaunt into the countryside; primarily to visit a portrait client but I also took the opportunity to scrump a huge bag of apples and pick the last of the blackberries on the way(its apple and blackberry crumble for me tomorrow...!). Seeing as I had nothing to transport, bar the apples, I took my rickety little bicycle rode up over my beloved South Downs, down the other side at breakneck speed and on the way back managed to break my bike chain with 5 miles to go so had to freewheel the last five miles down to the sea. One the positive side it highlighted that Im not as unfit as id thought (a 30mile round trip, half uphill is a good test) and best of all I enjoyed a moment of joyus perspective, standing on Devils Dyke (one of the hills of the downs) looking out over the Weald (big flat bit between the South and North downs), surrounded by the busy, living quiet of a hillside copse and everything bathed in the hot pastel shades of a dying sun, backed by the hazy gold of an almost autumnal moon. The perspective being that no matter how tricky life can feel in the center of a busy city, tennis balled back and forth from house to studio, bank to gallery, how startlingly important the minor grievances of tumultuous relationships or gradual depletion of a dwindling bank account may seem, the world goes on. The grass continues to grow, rabbits go on eating the grass, foxes go on eating rabbits. The sun rises, the sun sets; the world continues to turn. In our urban hives of industrious existence, where everything is designed, everything is placed so carefully, observed by so many and worried about perpetually its kind of comforting to think that outside of ourselves the living world en mass just...continues.

The trouble with dreams...

I had a horrific day of confusion and irrational upset yesterday, my work seemed trivial and shallow and I felt utterly lost and directionless, a long way down a road that Id never meant to start on in the first place. So I watched scrubs for 4hours, read for another 2 and resiststed the urge spend money I dont have on burger and chips. I then went to sleep for a good 10 hours 16 hours not working was a blow but I feel better for it and most interestingly everything that felt that it was missing in daily life was provided in the glorious technicolour or my lucid dreams.

Anyway. I'll press on as I have before, heres a work in progress of a painting that I didnt want to do but couldn't afford not to. Its coming out ok. I'll leave a proper post at some point soon.tata.

NB if when the large hadron collider i turned on it does happen to create a black hole that destroys life as we know it none of this will matter. What a cop out that would be...

Usualy a combination of love and fear

Profundity that can only come from the BBC.

It has been a trying day but I have to admit these things are minor enough to suck up pretty easily. The problem I have with trying to confront the little problems before me, following my passions is it leaves very little right to complain. Largely I am able to by enough paint to paint with, enough food to give me the energy to paint, I have the support of friends and family without suffocation and even at the worst of times in the last two years I have never wanted to be anyone but myself.

The Gallery project, Calico, appears to be in deep water. Or shallow, you can drown in both. Some times it can be tricky to juggle lots of balls when people keep throwing flaming torches in...

The painting requires a little more work on the fabric and the progress of that is throwing into perspective the inadequacy of the rest of the work. I also need to talk to the model more, I miss her whilst painting it (she is living in Canada and the work is being finished from photos).

Right. Nose back to the grindstone.

Letter to God

Here's something worth listening to, and thinking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KnGNOiFll4&feature=PlayList&p=AE14B7B3D9481ED3&index=0

aaand...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yoN6XfyQsr4&feature=PlayList&p=AE14B7B3D9481ED3&index=3

When I began working on the painting of Delaney (shown in my first post) I was painting loosely, with expression. Ive found myself getting all tight and niggly again. It was partly a result of being distracted yesterday by company, its easy to become afraid of risks when you're under scrutiny. My own hang up there, but something I shall have to overcome. Isolation isn't always a luxury I'll be afforded.

I'll be meeting a new studio-mate today, to join Emma Mia and meself in the new studio at New Engalnd House, after which I'll be sorting out the next Calico exhibition. Forgot about that until 12.30am. Oopps.

Paintings to do...accounts to mess about with...biog to write...tata

Black coffee, Red wine, A day in words

Coffee, red wine and brocoli (raw, in a little tuperware tub), paint, an image appearing, running low on flake white, St Bartholemew's looming over recovering junkies out the window. French rap, the smell of turps and a discarded cork.

Two visiting brunettes, beans on toast and an impassioned debate on temparance, a little more red wine, some carrots...

Anglo-welsh terrane erotica

Reading someone's diary; that little journal stashed beneath the mattress or secreted away in a hidden drawer, is so often accompanied by that dizzy little fish-hook tug of excitement in the gut.

Reading a blog can often seem more like a secondary school comprehension task. Censored as it is for the public eye a blog requires no guilty fumblings in the dark crannies of the authors private quarters; readily published for all to see there is no stolen moment, left alone, in which to snatch brief morsels of thought from private pages. More's the shame.

Thought for yesterday...

I was walking up a hill in Brighton last night listening to an Anglo-Welsh poem about having sex with a mountain. It occurred to me how surreal some pretty mundane things can sound when you write them down. Now I have.


Right now...

There are people in the corridor outside recycling bottles. Its 1-bloody-am on a Sunday morning.


Something important...

I was sitting at a table eating a hasty dinner at 11pm before returning to my studio and thought... In the last three days I have found my drive once again, I knew it just needed a little time to come to terms with the upheval and now all I need is my work, food and sleep are physical neccesities that facilitate creation. How can people up in the morning with something like this to drag them? I admire their blind tenacity.



Tata.