It's been a while since I wrote about art. This isn't because nothing's been happening - far from it - I've been quite busy, but whilst some time has been spent battering away at canvas (and occasionally even good ol' Bristol board) mostly it's been in my head, because I think there's some stuff going on in there that's pretty key as well. This ( Read more... )

One of my tutors once told me of a time he was trying to paint a sequence of works. It was a natural idea and it all just flowed : right up to the last piece, they just fell out of his brush, each perfectly formed and exactly how it had been envisaged, but the last one faught back. Days, weeks (or whatever) of fighting with it; painting over it, ( Read more... )

I’ve been redoing my website recently (some of you have been kind enough to beta test it and provide me with helpful feedback - thanks for that - a new version taking a lot of your criticisms into account is on the way) and since a large part of that has been writing my ‘blurb’ that all these websites seem to have, I’ve had to have a long think ( Read more... )

It wasn't so much the Friday night in with the stereo that did it as the Saturday spent in with the stereo really. In effect I had Sunday yesterday whilst zantic went out shopping with sha_d , which meant I continued much in the vein of Friday night. A couple more albums from the Genesis 70-75 boxset, and some kiwi dub (the rather excellent Green Room series ( Read more... )

Been feeling pretty crap the last few days. Generally run down and headachey - nothing specific, but then after lunch yesterday I started to feel decidedly ropey; of the dicky tummy variety, which really isn't like me - normally the only time I have stomach issues is when I've got a hangover and I usually earn those. Baked potatoes aren't the sort ( Read more... )

Some random stuff I am currently in to:

1) Miles Davis. Never really took to Davis. Back when I did my "I'd really like to try jazz" thing and bought a bunch of CDs from Fopp by the greats, I chose Kind of Blue by Davis and it never jumped out. In actual fact what happened was that I played it once, then played John Coltrane's Blue Train that I'd ( Read more... )

So last night, along with several folks from this virtual parish, I went to the 21st Paisley Beer Festival. It was great fun - getting there early was definitely the way because it meant we could do the initial flitting around tasting stuff in half pints before the hordes arrived, by which time we'd settled in to drinking pints of stuff we liked. ( Read more... )

Who knew what my creative mojo needed was a bleedin' cold. After not really being able to summon the energy to set up the easel since Eastercon's manic paint-a-thon, I sniffled my way into Strawberry Field yesterday whilst off sick and bunged up a very large canvas and had at it. As usual things didn't go to plan: I started to lay down the base for ( Read more... )

I was a pretty sickly kid. I was (and still am) asthmatic, had (and still have) an impressive range of allergies and was prone to a variety of colds and sinus problems every time they were kicking around. In adulthood I've got all that under control, and since caving to pestering from the quack, my Mum and and from
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