Just a small series of drawings inspired by one of my favourite poems, ‘The Sick Rose’ by William Blake.

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Cease your brawling,
we are the fallen,
here to declare paradise.
Hear all seeing leaders,
deaf swingers and bleeders,
declare but the asking price.

You will witness from hills,
our washed away ills,
as masters maintain division.
And you’ll wish for our wings,
to escape your mad kings,
who justify all excision.

Pray where you will,
but all deities rest still,
the solution rests where we fear.
There was ever only one earth,
from the day of our birth,
and paradise can only be here.

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I was asked by gallerist Benoit at le Lavo//matik in Paris, if I could revisit a subject that I briefly mentioned to him years ago. We both share a youth that was driven by the excitement of our respective punk scenes and the conversation started firing up old memories and one particularly relevant moment for me. It suddenly occurred to me that my first showing of oil paintings in a public venue was back in the early 1980s on the shop walls of a friend in Bath who was selling punk shoes, boots and clothes. I don’t know if the idea was mine or hers, but the paintings were on the walls in a little place called Bart’s Bazaar alongside the gear she was selling. They were portraits of friends that were happy to be painted nude, provided I made clear focus on their upstanding punk credentials – hair and extreme make-up. I also took the paintings to one of my failed art college application interviews, they obviously weren’t impressed! I don’t have the paintings anymore; this was the early 80s. But the important thing to remember is that this was the first time my work was publicly shown, and as the galleries in the town usually flipped the ‘closed’ sign whenever I approached clutching an art folder, this was the only way to get it shown. It’s that punk DIY attitude. Don’t give up when the established route is shut off to you, just do it yourself with mates and a slightly diverted direction … So a shout out and a thank you to Linda at Bart’s Bazaar and later Lucrezia Borgia… the finest punk clothes in town back in the day. It’s these small acts of support that keep artists going. And here I am, revisiting the idea of punk portraits more than forty years on.

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“All the Devils are here” started as just a piece of writing…

the prologue to an untold story
of one dreamt redemption and a lone redundant release
adrift with the breath of murder in the breeze
cold outro’s intro for the end days glory
here’s the hill so now walk mad madman
shepherd mocking the errant stride
it’s not here for the end but the ride
lost course unset for the lost helmsman
witness tired fathers flux under raw suns
snatched golden tickets for the last curtain fall
head drilled deep called another steeled tool
confusing sons wave to greet chasing guns
the broken winged cry of that busboy
desperate not to be scared of knowing
fat diners demand their clutched crowing
pulling white flags over that convoy
from the big window of the showroom
so certain sure they’re mechanic kingpin
thinking they’ve an in on the engine
that they’re not shopfloor, but boardroom
loudest called that business of bullhorn
sitting in the dark shedding the crown
crying alone won’t bring anyone down
our screaming together ever should warn
yet i will stand and play for all your teams
a decision shared being a decision halved
choice of fight or flight now salved
vanished screams whispered your varnished dreams
and when the sun shone on me after it died
I couldn’t wish to leave any flowers
worms ate the living marrow’s many hours
for none but the undeserving cared or cried
dropping grains of sand in an ocean
cynicism, precise, proficient and profound
to push the waters back over lost ground
i stand ever the priest to your devotion
from the hunt to the kill the shooter’s ungagged
technical worshipful white coated magicians
highlight our bombsighted dead-hand ambitions
blackened burnt cotton your ending is flagged
broke on the soil your draft’s soft plough
on earth race the heart of the raven
in seas let it loose to fresh sown haven
turning tides pulling high lumbered scow
hawkish gods drop from high for my tarring
so another strayed consequence
leaving no mark of significance
i am nothing if not nought, feathered but sparring
bitter succour on a bed of bloodless red roses
crossed by my heart and seen all to die
diamonds promised dropped downcard high
your cold deck’s the future our player proposes
reason of reason, the reason for school
for thought is the measure
that idea the treasure
the unimagined machine wrecking the rule
you never need fear the hunters of the fawn
when the light cuts and their guns holler roughshod
whistle stay for the day to drive to your night god
be yet the eater of their sins at the call of dawn
dreaming of salt still the seller’s price
it’s sympathy or a no-show so
squeeze out that tear for the window
not too much – one tear will suffice
you will never erase aged cruor from this page
to sink and be your own saving hand
from that loneliest seat in the land
free of the name sighed amid love and rage
paper tigers roar their headlines
tattooing your anger on a virgin arm
ink thick theories of more lessened harm
declaring theirs but not your dead lines
and calling time on the writers’ deaths
almost all sold long lost for a lie
i drink the hard sorrow of that last sigh
wind washes over those final breaths
but the love will always grow through
stoney ground baked to concrete
the weed never surrenders defeat
rising unwanted flowered twisting screw
bare your breast and point the arrow
a finger touches the mirror
brings the lost heart nearer
and warm grounds yield to cold harrow
sallow sun shifts a burn now sacred
then stands a face rift of silence
quiet burning a wind shouts defiance
your hurricane heart calling out hatred
watching masters see all and our bier
wishing above all our calmed surrender
but time and patience is our coin to tender
so kings and beggars march too the same sphere
all lands fear the wolves now walking
to towers now sounding their falls
below boughs broken and turned to fresh halls
not seeing the faun always calmed and stalking
humility announces the final treachery
even as it presents invitation
high steps leading to an abdication
our last line of idiocy and false century

Also available in an illustrated paperback here.

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“Rose de Sèvres” a small set of mixed media drawings (conte, pastel, oil paint and dymo-tape on Bristol paper). Perhaps inspired by the colour of the famous French Sèvres porcelain factory. Or perhaps inspired by the factory’s social history. Or the use of its buildings for political and diplomatic purposes. You decide…

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I think most people would agree that music is more emotionally significant to humans than visual art.
I’m not underplaying the strength of the team that I play for but can you as readily associate a significant moment in your life with a piece of visual art as you can with a piece of music? Personally, I can remember three incidents of seeing visual art that stopped me in my tracks: Franz Kline’s ‘Meryon’ and Mark Rothko’s ‘Seagram Murals’, both in the Tate, and Käthe Kollwitz’s ‘Woman with dead child’ in the Käthe Kollwitz Museum, Köln. But in each case the only memory associated is that of being bowled over by witnessing the art and the emotional memory stops there; seeing the same works again never seems to have quite that same emotional punch.
Music however… it can act as if it’s recalling punctuation points in your life’s story. A song not heard for perhaps decades can evoke not just memories but also the emotions felt of that specific time. It pulls the then into now with such force and authenticity it almost feels as if you are reliving that initial moment.
In the 80s, when my initial musical tastes were being formed, a song turned up from a band called This Mortal Coil when I was an 18 year old goth/punk. It was a scene I was new to in a city that was not strictly my home town and was listened to in a house with friends who were reeling with the shock of just hearing about another friend’s recent death to a heroin overdose. Personally, that emotional setting is inevitably tied to this song.
A decade or so later, the significant chorus lyric of the song was revived by techno/rave duo Messiah. And this is locked into my memory as being the first song where me and my wife danced together, laughing face to face and with joyous hands in the air, at an outdoor party.
With the advent of the internet it became easy to research the song and its history and I now have four versions that I love, but all for different reasons. So here’s the inspiration for these drawings ‘Song to the Siren’. And the versions that turn up on my studio mix list that’ll make me stop work and sit down to take some time to just listen: Tim Buckley’s live performance on The Monkees television show, This Mortal Coil’s 1983 studio recording and Sinead O’Connor’s recording from 2010. And if the Messiah version turns up you could catch me dancing…
But the key version for me is still the first heard – that of This Mortal Coil with the beautiful vocals of Elizabeth Fraser. They can lower me down to this one when I’m done.
Did I dream you dreamed about me…

The initial set of the drawings are being exhibited at BSMT gallery in London

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I recently turned down an opportunity organised by a well thinking public organisation to make and exhibit some artwork. The underlying principle of the proposed show was to ‘increase public awareness’ of climate change. My refusal was polite, and their intentions were, as I said, well meant; however, I also considered their arrival to the party at best, fashionably late and at worst, a waste of time. I did have other work I was prioritising, so my refusal wasn’t entirely selfless, but I do think that the public are now very aware of the reality of climate change. Those that vociferously attack the green wedge and cling on to the idea that the extremes of weather we know see across the globe are no worse or more frequent than those in the historical record are probably attempting to convince themselves that they do not have to change the perfumed lifestyles that they’ve grown accustomed to as safe until the day they’re dust or compost.
Inside the often insular working world I’ve chosen to rattle around in, the ‘art world’, we also should be looking at how we can minimise our impact on the environment. We need, and this includes at an institutional level, to address the processes of making, selling and exhibiting art in a manner that minimises that impact.
Like every other aspect of human activity, resources are consumed in the production of art objects. That consumption can be investigated by the individual artist to find the least impactful route in the delivering of a preferred outcome; it will generally be different for all. Personally, I’ve chosen a return to drawing on old newspapers and card packaging for preparatory and sketching work and save the best art papers for finished pieces and I will make more oil paintings on heavy paper and canvas boards rather than stretched canvases.
I have also looked at a more responsible approach to framing for my work. Previously I worked with framers who only used responsibly sourced wood but that is now becoming prohibitively expensive to self-fund without an exhibition in place. So, after some lengthy self-research, I have now decided to frame drawings using IKEA frames. This is a company that claims to work with an underpinning of environmental responsibility, and though I can only research as deeply as normally possible for a consumer, I think their claims are genuine. I now try to restrict the dimensions of most of my work to their framing dimensions. This has the bonus, IKEA being a global brand, of letting me ship work unframed to be mounted in the destination country via the stock from their local IKEA – reducing transport costs and carbon footprint (this was something I first did with my ‘Purgatorio’ exhibition in 2010 with Brooklynite Gallery in the U.S.)
A couple of the galleries I’ve worked with were not always supportive of this because of some pushback from potential buyers – but the work can always be reframed at their location if they are insistent. And, during my googly research, it was also interesting to find out that the recycled acrylic used in the IKEA frames was less energy and resource intensive in its production than traditional picture glass. Perhaps a bit counterintuitive for an old punk-hippy like me who’d always assumed glass was essentially the ‘go to’ recyclable.
Another change in habits is the personal cessation of turning up for opening evenings all around the planet. I haven’t flown now for eight years and yes, I do consider it a loss. I did enjoy visiting foreign cities that were only accessible via overseas flights, but it was never essential that I was there. It’s something that we could all consider regarding its necessity. This has also cost me the odd exhibition as I wouldn’t be able to also paint an exterior mural to promote a gallery’s show. I tried to accommodate by offering to send large drawn work to be pasted to the walls (my actual origins under the notion of street art) … but to no avail – they want their painted murals (keeping up with the Gallery Jones perhaps).
So the point I’m so laboriously dragging my arse around to… the current exhibition in Pasadena, California. The title of the show is ‘Works on Paper’. It’s not an original title for an exhibition, but it is a very specific title to the reason as to what work is there and why it’s there. Obviously, there are drawings and pastels but there are also oil paintings and mixed media works… all on paper. All the work is unframed for the two reasons of minimising the overall carbon footprint of transport and wanting to highlight the aspect of the unexceptional aspect of work being presented unframed in a gallery. So, my thanks go out to the very sympathetically minded Li Mei – Franco Gallery and the co-curators Xristine Franco and Michael Goldbrandsen who made it possible with all enthusiasm and sympathetically supportive outlooks.

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This is a book that happened by accident.

I frequently make my work in series or sets. In some cases, I’ll happen on an idea and rather than think the idea to a singular conclusion and solitary artwork I will follow that process through, so that it becomes the actual work itself. In other circumstances I will have an idea that requires more than one artwork to express the idea behind it. One example of this was the project to record a political demonstration a day, every day, for a complete year and 365 drawings were the result. Consequently, because the main thrust of the idea was to document a year’s worth of protest through a year’s worth of drawings, the individual drawings could not be sold without breaking the inspiration behind the set’s title of ‘another year of discontent’. So, the drawings have stayed with me, unexhibited in their entirety (it’s difficult to convince a gallery to exhibit 365 drawings that they can only sell in one shot) and so, they rest with me, unsold since their making. There have been quite a few sets of my work that fall into that ‘unsold and now hidden away’ category…

A couple of years ago I was offered the opportunity to release a book of my work. But circumstances conspired and the proposed luxurious, weighty ‘coffee-table’ artist monograph, despite nearly a year of preparatory editorial work, went the way of so many offers from the well-meaning – and off into the Bermuda Triangle Civic Library.

However, as circumstances conspire to undermine, so do coincidence and synchronicity occasionally align to progress. Within a week or so of the disappointment of the non-event publishing deadline passing, I had a small conversation on twitter with a writer who was bemoaning the current royalty rates paid by established publishing houses to non-literary royalty level writers. As our chat progressed, I discovered the current possibility and ease of self-publishing and the environmental benefits of printing on demand (rather than potentially storing a stock of unsold books in an unknown author’s cellar or garage for an eternity). So, I researched the options available, then edited and released my first self-published art book. This book was for my recent Labyrinth drawings that had frustratingly remained unexhibited following their first planned outing being knocked on the head by the pandemic; the die was cast.

Then I thought on… wasn’t this a sort of connection to the punk days again? A DIY dog walk if you weren’t getting the biscuits from the hand that fed you. I thought of the other projects in the past that have never seen an exhibition wall in their entirety because of the financial constraints forced on both myself as a maker and the commercial galleries as exhibitor, and how they could now be realised and made both exhibitively and financially viable. I am now able to produce art works that follow and feed my prose poetry and present them as they were intended as a combined and complete entity. So now, the original work can be sold without detracting from the whole as the integrity of the series is maintained in the publication. The added advantage is that the pricing of the book (intentionally kept low through the book’s format and design) allows a far wider physical distribution of the art and writing.

Regarding this book’s design, everything about it is intentional. I wanted a small, easily carried book that could be enjoyed without the reader resembling an ancient priest wielding a mighty tome of wisdom to a mystery lectern. The size mirrors one of my favourite art books of another contemporary painter that is always a pleasure to take from the bookshelf – in no short measure due to its unimposing size. Also, I didn’t feel a coffee-table book was appropriate in a time when many people have barely got the living space for a dinner table, let alone an additional coffee table.

And it could be a softback book too… The hardback book was once a supposed mark of superior quality (and therefore associated authority) that gave a referential nod to the hand bound books of old – but now it is an unnecessary additional expense when most people are quite capable of looking after the books that they buy.

And mostly, people do not buy art books for the words, so I will keep the words to the bare minimum (my apologies for this introduction).

The other words in this book – the poem, like the drawings have meanings that are specific only to me. There is no definite or ‘correct’ interpretation because we all bring our own baggage on our respective journeys through our time here. Your interpretation of the words and drawings will always be out of my control and so they are as equally valid as my initial inspirations and intentions.

The aesthetic of the drawings is also driven by an old obsession that I’ve now managed to exorcise. In my late teens I was introduced to the heavy tonality of mezzotint etching; it was a process that I had always since hoped to use in my work, but the circumstances and opportunity never arose. I loved the visual warmth and depth of this medium, it’s textures and varieties of mark making, and the fact that it was presented on paper within its own unprinted framing. Now I can present a drawn interpretation of that medium with the use of compressed charcoal, conté pencil and plastic eraser. And coincidentally, like the process of etching, the output can be delivered to an audience affordably.

I hope you enjoy reading and looking at this book as much as I have enjoyed making it; you can find it on amazon.

This book is a thing that happened by accident.

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