a fantasy wrestling poster i've been playing around with. . I'd love to film one of these bouts. Might get these printed as 2 color artwork on cheap newsprint and stick them up all over town.

RUMP!

RUMP! a new show from the people at 1loveart in Bristol. Check out some of my work if you're in town

STRANGE DAYS....

info on my 3rd solo show in london. private view september 3rd. it's in an upstairs gallery in a pub so there's no excuse not to come.

SUPERNOVA!

heres some details for my joint bristol show with james starr. do check it out people...

porn and charlie

sorry mr schulz.

soul boy

messing about with paper at the moment.

might do a screenprint of this

Sly

Sly Stone-

from the cover of Blues & Soul magazine 1973

UPFEST 2009

spent june 6th at The Tobacco factory, Bristol- it was Upfest, Britain's largest urban painting festival- by sheer chance it didn't rain for our 6 hour painting window. Fun all round.

TALISMAN

Eugene The Jeep is one of my favourite cartoon characters. he's purer than Jesus. Alice the Goon, on the other hand, is the most terrifying creation of all time. Alice scared the shit out of me in early Popeye cartoons. I love Eugene. Eugene makes me feel lucky and optimistic. Bless you Eugene.

Low

here's a picture that very much reflects how I see the world at the moment. It's called "The day After"- when I first moved to London in 1994 I was working for Nickelodeon in Soho, directing the live morning shows. Sometimes I'd have to work weekends, which would mean that I'd have to get into the centre of London for around 5.30am on a Saturday and Sunday. At this time on a weekend morning, Soho is full of drug addled freaks spilling out of nightclubs and wandering the streets like almost fashionable zombies. A depressing come-down freakshow of tramps, hookers, low-life and junkies gravitating towards the few cafes that are open at that early hour. It was fascinating. Depressingfascinating.

NEW WORK N PROGRESS

from the top:

ARIAL MANTRA

EMPIRE

DETRITUS

Getting a little more experimental lately, but running out of canvas again. I have a load of small frames I found in charity shops so I'll be playing around with them next.

new stuff

some new pieces i've been working on.... Poodles are strange. I imagine that the lumps are solid flesh with a thin covering of hair.

Genius

I've become acquainted with an American artist - Andrew Perry Davis. His work really clicks with me and his paintings are stunning. I'm sure he's going to be big one day. Andrew's work hits that dark / puerile spot that I tend to hang around in a lot. Click on the title of this blog to go to Andrew's blog.

 I think that early American animation has a lot to answer for (not that Disney crap, but the Felix The Cats and the Max Fleischers  and Tex Averys of this world)-I certainly have a deep affection for it- especially those old cartoons set in shops where the objects inside all come alive at night and move in their bouncy manner - all scary and funny at the same time.  A while back, Turner edited all the cigarette  smoking shots out from old Tom & Jerry cartoons. Fucking puritanical assholes. High School  Musical is 20 times more offensive in my opinion but I won't spoil my evening by going on about it.

Please check out Andrew's work. It's the product of a dark genius.

Up YOURS

Lately I've begun to focus more on the puerile side of things. Rude words, crappy scribblings, lewd imagery and bad grammar. a few pics of new stuff here, you wankers.:

top: "UP YOURS"

bottom: "HAPPY BIRTHDAY"

In a hole

Still feeling pretty low at the moment. Brain fog isn't very inspiring. will have photos of new work soon. 

Sentences. Getting. Shorter. Franz Ackerman will help....

focus

I'm broke. It's hard to work when you're worried about money. I recently got a hold of a bunch of random picture frames which i'll be doing stuff with soon. I have 10 canvases ina box waiting for me to get busy with, but I'm just not in the right frame of mind. I did, however, bring a squash to life last night before going to bed. maybe I could vandalise fruit. That'll bring the cash rolling in.

some inspiration

Charlie White, 

Philip Guston 

& Peter Max

A Virtual Reality

I'm taking part in a real exhibition which was curated from a guy's facebook friends list. Michael Picoron has put together the show, called "Facebook's Friends- A Virtual Reality" in Maubeuge, France. So pop on the bus and check out my six legged yellow pussy.

MY INFLUENCES PART 1

Film

• The Evil Dead
• The Tenant
• The Thing
• Little Murders
• Buckaroo Banzai
• Uzumaki
• Tron
• Possession
• Cowboy Bebop (the animated movie and the series)
• Warriors of The Wind (aka Nausicaa)
• La Planete Sauvage
• Repulsion

I've just realised that this will be an enormous list. I'll leave it at this for now.

NEW WORK N PROGRESS

This is a piece that I've titled "This Was England". I recently got hold of some old wrestling posters from 1977. Wrestling was a big thing when I was a kid, every Saturday at 4pm on ITV we'd watch a bunch of fat old leotarded blokes squashing each other on the canvas. I remember the patriotism of the whole thing quite vividly. That, and my dad getting into it as he'd had a couple of pints in the afternoon. Unlike big, pumped up and brash American wrestling, this was crap "seaside entertainment" British wrestling. There'd be a load of grannies in the audience prodding the wrestlers with their walking sticks and shouting obscenities just beyond the range of the microphones. My dad took me to watch it live when I was 11. I've never sen him so excited. Even as a child I appreciated that these guys were playing the part of working class superheroes. Unlike the oiled up toned monsters of today, these guys would probably be seen in their local pub on a weekend. They certainly had the build of heavy drinkers. 

MINK SCHMINK

The preview night of my latest show was last night. Some interesting work, especially the piece by Charlie gates- definitely a talent to look out for. Forgot to ask her how she stuck the hands to the dartboard. There will be a limited edition print available of one of my pieces "The Don", seen here- click on the "Mink Schmink" link above to go to the gallery site and find out more.

I Love Erwin

Nothing to say except that Erwin Wurm is god.

BLIND ANGLE (click me)

Today I joined Blind Angle, one of the UK's most well known online contemporary art galleries. It's very exciting to be selling work alongside Banksy, Faile and Takashi Murakami. I could do with selling some work, as I'm fucking broke at the moment. Don't have enough for canvas. Can't get any dvds out and i'm not going down the pub.  Somehow I doubt that Takashi Murakami worries about whether he can afford a small pouch of Golden Virginia whilst he's knocking up a new handbag for Louis Vuitton.

 Also, my work will be in a new exhibition "Mink Schmink" at The Wilson Williams Gallery  in Hackney for a month- preview night is Friday Jan 16th from 6-9pm...... more details on this at www.wilsonwilliamsgallery.com 

it's a group show and should be very interesting.

Last year

Some pics from my first solo show: "Cosmic Slop" last October at the Nellie Dean, Soho. 

Trombipulation

I'm sitting across the table from my older son (9)  watching him draw. Children have  a unique touch when they get creative. Their minds haven't been filled with all the rules yet. As a result, their work has a fresh, unashamed confidence that is so full of life. Grown artists spend their whole lives trying to "unlearn" and work with such innocence. Self consciousness, for me, is the biggest stepping stone to true creativity. The fear of what other people will think, and the fear of failure. It's actually impossible for a grown up to draw like a child. When you see kid's drawings in films you can always tell when they've been done by an adult. I reckon that part of it is scale. Because the pencil is so large in comparison to the child's hand, the resulting lack of control results in a coarser drawing style. I might try taping my hand up to restrict wrist movement  to see what effect that has.

This piece is an exploration in order and chaos. I was listening to Public Enemy when I made it. "Trombipulation" is the name of a P-Funk album by Parliament.