My show ‘Hard lines’ has finished.Twelve days passed in a blink. How to write about it? I’m very uneasy using some terms – spiritual is one; I cannot claim it, but it pokes at me. The irony of ‘Hard lines’ […]
I had hoped to have posted about each of the pieces in the project individually but Christmas socialising, collecting work and struggles with photographic images saw my time just disappear this last week. So I have just put a gallery […]
For when there is dancing again is the first of a series of minimalist collages I have wanted to do for some time. One of them has been sitting waiting to be pasted and drawn/painted for over a year. Fear […]
“A Title Stolen From Another Painting” is more lyrical than my usual style, yet it has its origins in some black and white minimalist collages I did before I started this project. I wanted to make something less stark but […]
The title of And They Will Never Leave Me Behind, 32/50 Collages Before Christmas, relates back to number 26 in the series. It’s really a sketch for a much bigger work and I had been intending to try it out […]
Solve et coagula is the description of a stage in the alchemists’ process where everything that has gone before seems to pass away, to disappear into an unrecognisable fluid state then begin to reform into something completely new and original. […]
I’m really getting behind on posting about this project – I am not even keeping up with production on Twitter! The main reason is the lack of light and the lack of time. The images are really bad because winter […]
I find it interesting how two ideas can become one. The sprayed and cockled slotted paper was headed for another collage but got hijacked by this. Probably not ready the first time (29/50) is one of my favourites in the […]
Sometimes with collage you can find yourself adding more and more pieces: with this, 28/50 Collages Before Christmas, I found myself cutting smaller and thinner pieces and discarding lots – but they might turn up in another collage coming your way […]
Number 27 of 50 Collages Before Christmas is “It Was Ever Thus (But A Bit Different)“. I suppose it’s from my Tidelines work and has its root in my local Jurassic Coast, especially Charmouth, but these juxtapositions have become continual […]
I have a history with black squares and with lines – hand drawn but not ruled, sometimes less straight than I could easily make them – and with photos of lines. I don’t have a history with clips of nails, […]
Just in case anyone is actually following my progress on this little 50 Collages Before Christmas project, I want to assure you that all is going fine. I have been steadily working on multiple pieces a the same time but […]
The quality of photographs for this project is mostly pretty poor and Mixing It With Maurice In The Morning, 23/50 Collages Before Christmas, is one of the worst. I haven’t got the time – or at present with collages in […]
Apart from two pieces cut from a catalogue, the materials of this are my drawing and painting on to various materials – either recycling other work that didn’t work or made especially for collage. The title for 22/50 Collages Before […]
The 20th of 50 Collages Before Christmas is “Gone The Days Of Rainbows”, a minimalist offering that harks back to collage work that I did a couple of years back in the way of studies for large paintings that I […]
The title of this piece, “Two Blacks Don’t Make A White”, apart from it’s playful aspect, is purely descriptive. It is not so noticable in this reproduction, but the upper and lower forms are subtly different blacks. The upper shape […]
I wasn’t sure where this one (18/50 Collages Before Christmas) was going for a while and the photograph of one of my erasure drawings in progress kept prompting me to erase or redact it all! Nevertheless I kept pretty much […]
Sometimes There’s Very Little Point and sometimes you just have to be bold and slosh paint on expensive, fine handmade paper and then cut it up and splosh paste all over it, risking tearing it, and stick it on something […]
Here’s what happens when the first idea doesn’t work. In most cases when I start a piece of work I have a pretty good idea of what I want to achieve and how the finished piece will look. Sure there […]
I wonder if my love for simple, minimal and uncluttered artwork is as much a message to self that it is time to tidy up my life as it is a symptom of my time spent in graphic design or […]
Offering No10 of 50 Collages Before Christmas Didn’t We Believe We Were Something? is the piece mentioned in the last post about which I was undecided how to proceed. I decided to go with the easy it wanted to go […]
It’s official, Richard Serra is the most important and most influential artist of the 21st century, well that’s what I say! I could just be saying that I really like his work I suppose, yet if I strip away the […]
This piece, Abstract Drawings For Dummies I: The Tiny Section of My Soul marks the start of two series of work: Abstract Drawings For Dummies and 50 Collages Before Christmas. I had been adding small sections of collage into my […]
Number 5 of 50 Collages before Christmas is “You Were Meant To Follow The Plan”. It harks back to some of the darker collages I did during my #Collage365 project a few years ago, only this one is a lot […]