52nd Painting

It's hard to imagine such a well respected person such as David Hockney having such a small minded view with regard to smoking. He's obsessed with the rights of smokers to the point of calling non-smokers 'mean-spirited' and has taken on the mantle of grumpy-old-man His angry rants at non-smokers include complaining to the NHS for banning smoking in the buildings and grounds. Grow-up Mr Hockney, you're living in the dark ages.
My painting of him defiantly smoking is a change in style for me. I painted this completely upside down focussing on colour and line trying hard not to be so obsessed with detail.

51st Painting

Looking for inspirational resource material is a daily event for me and the photographic image I've used as a reference to this piece of work rightfully made the front page of the free paper Metro. The image shows a man and a boy knee-deep in water wading to safety near the village of Basira in the Punjab in Pakistan. The flood-ravaged country has lost villages and livestock with millions of people seeking high ground as the main Indus river burst its banks overwhelming some of the largest dams ever built. This image glows with a spiritual essence, back lit, casting a glow of white light behind the figures with the photographer's shadow spreading across the body of the man. My painting can never do justice to either the subject matter or the sad beauty captured by the camera but as I paint I can spend time considering their plight.

50th Painting

Nigerian novelist Helon Habila sees the act of writing as a political act and his debut book, Waiting For An Angel, draws attention to suffering and injustice. His third novel Oil On Water speaks about the tragedy of the power of the greedy oil companies in Nigeria who he says 'get away with murder'.
How can I make a comment on the world through painting faces? How can I get paint to tell a story about people and their stories?

49th painting

48th Painting

Facial expression in an image has the capacity to hold the viewer's attention beyond the passing glance we often give to a portrait. I thought this child's bewildered reverential stare was definitely worth a longer gaze and I adored painting his beautiful face and couldn't help remembering my own children at this age. Keegan Carty, aged 2 was enjoying a special trip to the Newcastle United's training session.
Artists have used the whole colour palette to depict the face and the flat plane of the canvas means the artist can experiment in order to suggest the arcing and the arching of the face.

47th Painting

This week has seen the aid worker Karen Woo murdered in Afghanistan by the Taliban. She was only 36 years old and about to be married. My painting doesn't do her justice but as I was painting it I had a real sense of her.
Her short life and the unfairness of her situation resonated strongly with me. I'm spending a lot of time with my mum and dad, both in their 80's, and until recently in great health, doing everything together and a bit of an institution in their local neighbourhood. I wanted to show the tenuous hold we all have on life and as I was finishing the painting it seemed apt to let some of the paint drip. The running paint seemed to remind me that we're never complete and never have total control of anything.

46th Painting

Painting of the prize winning poet Jo Shapcott whose primary interest is in the body, '...it's edges, it's weaknesses.'
This image was taken from the recent Saturday Guardian article of her and shows to me a strong intelligent face full of questions and maybe even some answers. The article was highlighting her new book of poems 'Of Mutability' and the spirit of the book is about the late artist Helen Chadwick whose work often references the role and image of women. Artist painting poet referencing artist!