Three Teenage Moons

Before I bombard you with the next set of scribbly abdominal stretches and athletic kitties, I'll just post this one painting and some words about it.

I really am producing a lot of drawings at the moment, and I don't want them all to melt into a homogenised sludge on the blog.... so here's a greatly oversaturated peculiarity of a 2005 thingy:





In 2005 I had a brief to produce twenty perfectly square paintings for a gallery that sold only square pictures. The gallery has gone out of business now, but the methodical and goal-oriented way this forced me to work was quite useful, in hindsight.

This picture was produced in a hurry... it wasn't invested with any individual significance, in a way. It was organic and 'accidental', like a lot of things I've done. I don't even know how many media are 'mixed' in it now... some watercolour, oil pastel, probably acrylic, coloured pencil... in a lot of ways it's a bit if a mess, and my current sensibility finds the colour a bit garish and thoughtless. It would have been done quite 'quickly' (by my standards of the time), and alongside several others of the same size.

But there are aspects of it that I like, and that remind me of things I can do that I haven't tried to do for a while. The 'moons' are the best part.

The other bit's wrestlers, of course. It's Shawn Michaels cradling Randy Orton's head, which here resembles a large bruised fruit.





I've discovered a joyous freedom lately not only in 'loosening up' in my drawings, but also in actively sharpening my eyes and my skills. I'm giving more attention to fundamental mechanical principles of picture-making that I'd unwittingly neglected for many years while I searched for meaning in slow blobby paintings.

But I wanted to create a balance on this blog, since the drawings... well not only are they very probably building TOWARDS some decisively new painting project, they also come... have emerged... FROM something... these old paintings are kind of part of the story, maybe it would be more honest to include them in the... erm... story.

Sometimes I feel like a pretentious art twat staying in the guest bedroom of the wholesome cartoonist community and borrowing its pencils.

But I'm perverse and I'm never happy unless I feel caught in a tension between two things. Or more than two!

Like silly billies before me, I fantasise about being a misfit renegade.

When I google image searched 'misfit renegade' I found this picture of Brian May from Queen.



Practical thoughts: important bit: I want my future paintings to have more... obvious self-justifying purpose...

Less blobs. Less mess.

and more joy and dynamism of their own... going to go and write a writing blog now.

I'm transgressing the purpose of this one...