Back to the 1980’s. A still life set up in my studio in the Meadow Mill building in Dundee, part of the WASPS network of studios throughout Scotland. It was a great working atmosphere and I have very fond memories of that time and those folks… although it was possibly the coldest non-refrigerated building in … More From the Vaults V
I had the sudden urge to draw really big drawings of picture hooks. On old packing cases. Some might say this is the result of spending too much time in windowless galleries “handling” art. I say you could be very close to the truth. With most of my work, I’m a stickler for cripplingly expensive … More The Middle-Class Hero and the Diaspora
Still life. Nature Morte. My dad used to paint still lives because they were good for you. Like barley malt or Lane’s Emulsion, a ghastly fish-tasting concoction from New Zealand that was forced down my throat as a child. Ah, happy days. So, stuck in the house still suffering from the lung ailments the emulsion failed to cure and … More Apple Blossom
Uh oh, more 80’s stuff. This one was kicked of by a Vladimir Nabokov short story about fear and how we deal with it. From memory the narrator doesn’t deal with it too well. The piece is once again a slightly surreal mixture of still-life elements in an imagined environment. Imagery here includes chattering clockwork teeth … More From the Vaults IV
This one was shown in New York as part of the Scotch in the Apple exhibition organised by the Vaughan Gallery in 1992. More Imagist shenanigans here. A fish that will swallow anything, lots of paper cut-out figures, the ticker-tape parade, sinister gloved hands, a cartoon laughing mouth on a stick and so on. The dots … More From the Vaults III
For my 50th birthday last year I was given the chance to hike and sketch in the Flinders Ranges in South Australia. This is somewhere I have wanted to visit since I arrived in Australia, so it was a real treat. There was some fantastic walking and a great camping ground at Wilpena Pound. Sadly, … More Mt Ohlssen Bagge
art about place 