I saw this red poster in ‘The People’s Republic of Stokes Croft’ in Bristol recently and it made me laugh out loud. Bristol is a GREAT city and full of great scenes like this, so I felt a painting coming on. I am painting a series of artworks involving street art and graffiti all around Bristol, but always with my trademark woman somewhere in the foreground. I shall also be painting local iconic backgrounds such as the wonderful BearPit Bear. I am excited. In fact I got so excited, I went in search of fluorescent oil paints for the posters on the wall behind the woman. These do not seem to exist in the UK, so have spent all my worldly wealth on 5 tubes of brilliant colours from America which look amazing. However I will now have to tone down the colours, as the woman risks being swamped by such bright zinging tones. I will only be painting in the detail of the Make Bristol Shit Again poster to create emphasis and will leave the other posters indistinct. I will eventually get the lettering right, so please bear with me. The shoes are based on a fantastic pair of…
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This is, for me, a larger piece at 76 x 76 cm ( 30 x 30″ ). This is because it will be going to Cape Town when the paint has dried and South Africans prefer larger artworks in their lovely, sunny, high ceilinged spacious homes. State Of The Art gallery is taking it (http://stateoftheart-gallery.com) and I look forward to seeing it hanging in their new permanent space at 50, Buitenkant. This gallery is first and foremost an online gallery, but has had gallery space in Shortmarket Street for the last couple of years. I look forward to seeing the new gallery opening in August. I intend to paint a series of works depicting local scenes with my trademark woman in the foreground somewhere. I am interested in street art and graffiti, and would like to preserve them in my paintings, as of course by their very nature, graffiti/street art regularly gets painted over. There is a wealth of talent in and around Cape Town, particularly in Woodstock and I can’t wait to get started. The Labia in this painting is South Africa’s oldest working cinema, much like the Curzon here in England in Clevedon, down the road…
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‘The Hare, North Street, Bristol’. Work in progress. 28/06/17
Another painting to drive me mad with patterns to paint, much as in ‘Bristol North Street Blues..Reds & Oranges’. I don’t think of these little problems when I set up a composition. Once I have seen what I want to paint, I tend to jump in and photograph it without heed of the consequences… My problem is that I am far too impatient to be a truly realistic figurative painter; I used to want to be, but now accept that it’s just not me. So with the panelled glass of the window of the pub, I am going to attempt a more impressionistic interpretation and let the eye of the viewer make up the rest. At the moment I feel the glass is too bright for the rest of the painting, so will paint a glaze over it next week when the paint is drier. The Hare is a lovely little pub on North Street where I live. It is a darker green than painted here, so I have used some artistic licence to liven it up a bit. I find I often use the Colour Wheel for deciding colours without realising it (Google for more info). Green…
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