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...