Big Feet People

A New Leaf

2010-04-25T03:29:00.000-07:00

A lot less politics now! The election is on, the world is humming with heat and a lot less light so time to shift down a gear and think about things that last longer than a soundbite.

Photography is beginning to interest me more - it has started as a necessary evil for portraiture and now is becoming a pleasure in itself. I am slowly building a 'texture library' interesting barks, mosses, stones etc. Not easy to see how I might apply that to my sculpture but it is worth a thought.

Medievalism is also stalking my thoughts - a visit to Tintern Abbey in Monmouthshire has been quite inspirational. Wonderful place. Peaceful despite the busy road and deep in the Wye Valley which is sublime - Wordsworth clearly though so...

Work in Progress

2010-02-26T11:43:00.000-08:00

What with the UK getting more snow than the Canadians and a hectic work schedule, plus yes, the intrusion of a beautiful lady into my otherwise humdrum existence, I have been a bit slow with new work recently. I would like to think that this is a new style maturing and getting ready to wow the wider world...

In the meantime a small development - a looser style to my big feet people and more overt political caricature. This is still work in progress and needs another pair of figures to complete the group. Title still to be decided - but Brown's Britain is a working start.

The lead figure is a modest likeness of the waste of oxygen and bombast that is Gordon Brown. Following on his coat tails, chasing the handouts that he surreptitiously offers behind his back is that symbol of our times, the hoody. I am particularly pleased with this figure. The body language I hope conveys that slouch shouldered mixture of despair and anger that is the result of no hope and no future which is all GB has to offer the underclass that he has so actively fostered.

The remaining pair is to be the 'lifestyle' single teenage mother - and the unloved and unlovely offspring of this situation, kicking screaming and swearing at the back of this procession.

Overall I think quite a depressing piece, but one that I need to complete. Hope is the greatest human refuge and this appalling governement and its mindless acolytes have destroyed hope for millions, most of all the millions they purport to represent. They have removed any vestige of self respect from a generation of young men and made the young women prostitutes to the State. The handout culture has become a way of life that is surely killing all involved, those depending on it, and those paying for it. That is what I am trying to portray and that is what I want to destroy.

Trials & Tribulations

2010-02-11T12:18:00.001-08:00

Well so much for my News Years resolution to post more often... gone already. Simply too much going on in the real world to be pottering about in the cyber world.

What a week - working way too hard - but prevented from burning both ends by the studio being frozen off again. This will mean more heads falling off incomplete pieces!

The wider world also appears to be heading steadily more mad. The level of hypocrisy being reached by the political classes, not just in the UK but Europe more widely is staggering. Greece has only one choice - cuts. Not pretty, but they voted for promises that could never be kept and why should the rest of us bail out the Greek politicians? We have enough bailing out of our own corrupt politicians to be going on with. The news that the anti-corruption watchdog at the House of Commons will cost six times as much to run as it will save is risible. Surely a couple of junior (cheap) civil servants requiring that MPs do as the rest of us and submit receipts for all items claimed is all that is required? Certainly not a 3 day a week one hundred grand a year supremo to make sure that MPs dont misbehave!

The is a wider disinclination to believe that the Nevernever Land of the last decade is finally dead - house prices only ever go up, Gordon will make money appear for his acolytes... well, the falsity of the former is going to make the latter politically impossible. The Tories have yet to realise that we, the plebs, are much less forgiving of sponging and dishonesty now that the house price madness has had a dose of reality poured over it....

Regarding that madness - surely cheap houses are a good thing. People can afford them, they dont get repossessed and people can afford to spend money on things the wider economy offers. Those people who felt wealthy because their houses had gone up in notional value need to remember three things. Firstly,relative to other owners their position has not changed, in fact if they needed a bigger house the differential just got bigger. Secondly that a house is somewhere to live, it costs money to maintain and its not a get rich quick scheme. Finally that it is a horribly illiquid asset - you cant pay for a holiday by selling off half a bedroom...unlike shares which can be readily sold at any time.

Medieval Influences

2010-01-30T15:42:00.000-08:00

Apparently things medieval are becoming fashionable. This is quite annoying to me because I have been interested in medieval history, politics and art for a some time now. It strikes me that while the differences are huge between the present time and say 13th century England, some of the parallels are also interesting:
- replace the catholic church with the EU as the supranational power broker and
forum for international deal making, making perennial raids on national
sovereignty
- intellectual elites living a vastly different life from that of the majority
- confrontation with Islam

The art of the period is of course dominated by religious subjects and for a sculptor the largest sources of extant work are the stone carvings on religious buildings. English sculpture of this type presents a problem in that many fine pieces were destroyed in the Tudor period and the Civil War but quantities survive and I am trying to collect some images to use as a starting point for my own work.

The ones in this post I took on a walk around Castle Combe in Wiltshire - reckoned to be one of the prettiest villages in England, which takes some claiming, but might well be true!

Back To Work

2010-01-30T11:52:00.000-08:00

Christmas is past, weight has been gained, the big freeze and too much of the day job has put my studio out of action for most of the last two months and I have been busy online doing other things so no posts...

This will change - the resolution is made, this is the year that I manage to post a new article at least once a week... there its in print!

So much has happened, both politically, economically and socially that this year should also be an artistically significant one - will my contribution be any good? Who knows!

The big feet people are changing - economic necessity and the need for a change of style means that these figures are going to free up, less emphasis on the caricature element and more on the overall feel of the piece. Also more groups and more political / social themes.

Today has been one of change in The Wold Gallery, Moreton-In-Marsh, where I show my work. Lots of positive comment and interest in the work, that might return as commissions later, but disappointing sales...so new material. Prunella the gardener and a couple of cricketers are going to try their luck. These pieces are already looser in the glazing, more like a watercolour finish to them. Hopefully this and a modest price reduction will help sales.

Success!

2009-11-22T15:44:00.000-08:00

Success - the sale has translated and my shooter piece will be off to a new home in darkest Gloucestershire. Another piece might be following the same direction so all is rosy.

I have been up to my eyes with making new pieces so watch this space for more of the fun pieces and also more political satire.

The trouble with satirising events in the UK at the moment is that they are already so absurd that there is really very little point! We have a government who have systematically borrowed too much and taxed too much and spent too much... presided over an asset bubble and deliberatley mis-regulated the banks, introducing a law to ensure government will be sensible about spending! There is no objective measure of what sensible is and even one so small as me might argue that being responsible with our money is what government should do in any event. Passing a law does not make this happen when the government has been incapable of controlling its own stupidity.

Possibly worse than the sheer lunacy of such actions is the insulting assumption that we, the 'ordinary' people are too stupid to realise that they are lying to us and that the architect of this bankrupting of our country resides here - Gordon Brown. Coincidentally this shower of criminals and incompetents abolished the law of treason. It should be reinstated immediately and Brown (for ruining the country as both Chancellor and Prime Minister) and Blair (for lying through his teeth to the nation and taking us into two wars which we did not properly prepare for and which we had no business to be fighting - see Sunday Telegraph today) should be the first cases brought. A short trial and a trip to the Tower would be justice.

Another small step

2009-11-05T11:50:00.000-08:00

It would appear, dear reader, that there is a Coutts cheque standing deposit on my 'shooter' big feet person - so very reasonably priced and excellent value!

Hopefully this translates to a full sale in the very near future and that will allow me to fund getting a new telephoto lens for the camera - better portraits to follow, one hopes.

I have been a wee bit slow with the blog for the last few weeks - long drawn out bout of man flu and busy actually making sculptures. My studio is not heated though so it is taking ages to get them dry for firing. Two cricketers and a headmaster at speech day are waiting the flames as soon as may be arranged. These will be glazed - and may be the last to be so.

Back... and more planning

2009-10-27T12:59:00.001-07:00

Well - I have been away for a few days for reasons in general too dull to mention... apart from a fun trip up to London.

The gallery situation is good - I now have a bunch of pieces working for me in a gallery in Gloucestershire and with a wee bit of luck more to come.

The dilemma I face at the moment is colour - glaze or not glaze. Opinion seems to be divided on this front between those who like the coloured caricature pieces and those who prefer my more serious unglazed comment pieces. I am in the latter camp... it makes a neater tie with the pure portrait stuff.

Thoughts oh invisible reader....

More Interest

2009-10-09T15:27:00.000-07:00

Well - another week, more mailshots and another hint of interest in my work. Good gallery good location.

I am wondering about some things though - sale or return, I know some, admittedly established,artists who wont touch it. Coming from a commercial background I am used to a term of credit like 30 or 60 days before payment but not an ongoing investment. Mind you the normal retail markup is higher so I imagine it pans out.

More worrying is insurance and ownership - if for example the gallery went bust - how do I find out and get my property back? If the piece has not been sold then it is difficult if not impossible to insure, so if it is damaged in the store I lose it. Not ideal.

Still, on the bright side, if I can get seen in good places it makes a start in the right direction!

David Cameron

2009-10-08T15:17:00.001-07:00

Awesome. Simply the best political speech I have ever heard. It was what politics is all about. I didn't believe that anyone in politics actually thought about it the way I do - about hope, helping people to realise their dreams, about freedom, respect, self-reliance and mutual support.

There is no doubt that this was not political nuance - he believes this, this is his credo and he has told us what the thought process will be and where we can go. Nevertheless there was a trail a mile long of Labour foxes well and truly shot. It is the triumph of principal over mean minded calculation.

If he can help us remove the blight of the green-eyed suspicion and overweening interventionism of socialism from this country and bring about even a small part of this vision then Britain will be a great place to live and will have a great future.

See it - www.conservatives.com

Technique

2009-10-07T13:29:00.001-07:00

Well its always handy to learn new tricks - or old ones presented well. This one is I think a good start point for my re-education.

Casting Experiments

2009-10-04T07:59:00.000-07:00

I am attempting to get quality results in cast paper - for low relief wall mounted sculpture. It is proving surprisingly difficult thus far!

First mistake appears to be have been to try and produce a full 'box' form in one cast - the paper doesn't shrink away from the mould as much as other things and is not as robust when you are trying to remove it.

Second mistake might have been to be too cavalier about undercuts.

Third mistake - well I don't know quite what the reason is but I can tell you the result: pitting in the cast surface. Very poor resolution of the mould's texture.

This raises a couple of questions I think:

Am I being true to the material, trying to get a smooth hard surface finish, is it actually possible?
Does the dilution of the pulp, at least for the first layer matter? Should I go thinner with the mix?

Another example to us all...

2009-10-04T07:50:00.001-07:00

Ah Harriet Harman, you don't have to invent her because she exists but to do so would require at least Orwell and probably Kafka. She has exceeded herself this time - and added to the list of actual criminal offences committed by members of this government that will go strangely unpunished.

To crash into another car is something that can happen to anyone, even the most attentive driver. She was apparently on her mobile and then drove off with a breezy "I am Harriet Harman you know where to find me". Well I could claim to be Donald Duck and therefore readily findable but I should still have to provide a full name address and insurance details to the injured party. Failure to do so is a criminal offence. As is using a mobile while driving - she should know, she helped pass the legislation. The chances of the law being applied to her? In this country? Slim to nil.

Gordon Brown.... when will they put the stake through him?

2009-09-30T12:14:00.000-07:00

Well. We have had The Big Speech. Dreadful bilge from start to finish. A shopping list of un-costed bribes with our money to buy votes from the undeserving client state - worse, people who might have had a future of self-respect and growth but who have been sold down the river by Brown.

This man and his acolytes have destroyed the only route out for the poor, namely education, devalued the standards, yet still more people fail to attain any results at all - despite the headline 'passes'. Illiteracy is now a serious problem in this country. Having been denied the basic tools of survival in a modern economy people are then made subjects of the handout state - where if you do show any sign of energy and personal ambition the punishment is a marginal rate of tax of over 80% - in lost benefits as well as actual taxation. So 'progressive'.

The rest of it - simple minded scare mongering and lying about what the Conservatives will do. Of course they will cut the size of the state. They have to. We have more than one in four of the people in the working population working for the government and the highest tax take in history. It is not sustainable - especially when we are all supposed to be saving for our own old age - with what? We haven't anything left.

The big question that no one is yet addressing is this - what should the government actually do? What are the things that ONLY government can do for the benefit of the people? I would argue that this is actually a very limited subset of its current activities: defence, maintenance of law, foreign policy, possibly transport infrastructure - though I believe that trains would be better privatised completely with wheels and rails together, as they were built - and ensuring universal access, though not necessarily ownership of the means of delivering, health care, like-wise education.

Social provision and intervention is something that may be more effectively and humanely delivered by charitable organisations, if we allow for American style tax breaks for donation, and great swathes of the micro-managment and nanny state can simply be disposed of.

Progress!

2009-09-30T00:10:00.000-07:00

Another quicky - proof of the old saying that the more I practice the luckier I get: started proper mailshots of galleries last night and got a positive response - 1 in 20 is not bad going I think.

Its not an instant buy but a statement of interest with potential, which is as good as I am going to get at the moment.

Saatchi Gallery

2009-09-25T14:41:00.000-07:00

Marketing has to be done. Completely distressed by my invisibility on the web unless I type my own name! Since no one has ever heard of me this is a highly unlikely search!

So what to do? First port of call has been to sign up to the Saatchi Gallery online. It all looks quite neat. Small steps I guess.

Social Stereotype

2009-09-25T12:23:00.000-07:00

Well it is Friday thank heaven and the weekend has officially started - the first glass is down and I can unwind and think about doing another sculpture over the weekend.

I think it is the tenor of the times but my recent big feet people have been a bit more complicated and downbeat. The horrendous double-speak and outright lying of our shambles of a government and the general dawning of realisation of just how big a hole they have dug for us does not lend itself to good cheer. It certainly means I can 't hope to make much headway in getting this stuff off the ground so I can live on it, keep plugging away at the day job then! I think this weekends effort might well be another 'angry' one, just have to see...

To counter the gloom here is one I made earlier, gentle mickey taking of someone I know 'Long Shot':

Weird Values

2009-09-22T10:18:00.000-07:00

Another moment of pure bewilderment today. I had an enquiry about doing a portrait from someone who had seen the one below. They baulked at the price. It is more than a weeks full-time work and they wouldn't have batted an eyelid at paying a plumber what I asked.

It is a truth about art - people will expect it to be cheaper than it should be for the maker to live, yet those same people will happily spend far more on a new TV or car that depreciates and falls apart all too quickly. Rather than a new car every three years why not every four and spend the difference on quality paintings? Because they see value in the depreciating chunk of metal the same as everyone else's, but not in original objects. Peculiar.

Working Statement

2009-09-21T15:24:00.001-07:00

I am trying to interest galleries in selling my work and one has asked for a cv (very brief in my case) and a working statement. Now I normally regard these things as rather precious but you have to play the game, so with tongue welded to cheek here is the first draft:

'Art is about humanity. It is about our emotions and how we respond to the world we are in. Figurative art has the power to convey emotion in a way that abstraction does not because we have learned the language of the human body and how it displays emotion from the very earliest moments of our lives.

To be effective a sculpture must live and move; stylisation can help this. Simplification of the line and form of the figure does not invalidate its ability to communicate. It can enhance it by removing the artists idea of the particular, the original, and letting the observer find their own resemblances – allowing them to identify with it. My current style, with the tapering body shape and exaggerated hands and feet arose from experience drawing in public, seated on the ground. I realised that I shared the viewpoint of a small child and I think this subconscious memory encourages people to feel positively about these images.

My most recent work has been divided between experiments in life-like portraiture, which is challenging in the sense of capturing the spirit of the sitter as well as a mechanical likeness, and simplified, almost caricature figures. These figures have tended to be comic, recognising stereotypes and idiosyncrasies in the people I know. I especially enjoy the guessing game among people who see them about who I based them on.

Some of these stylised figures, however, have started to make use of this ‘recognition factor’ to explore more complicated subjects and to ask questions about where we are as a society. I would like to think that all these pieces can be experienced at more than one level and that any deeper meanings that emerge does not remove from their aesthetic appeal.'

Tax the rich....

2009-09-21T12:12:00.000-07:00

Tax the rich they cry. Idiots!

I am NOT rich, not even in the hinterland of comfortable. I worry about the bills that come in every month and I pray every time I start the car that it will work and I won't get a flat tire and nothing runs into me. But I do not want the rich fleeced.

I want them to spend. I want conspicuous consumption of quality, expensive, hand made products from right here in Britain. I want more people who are rich and busily demonstrating the fact to their rich friends. Why? Well obviously I want them to buy art - but anything will do. Handmade means more people working to make these things, whatever they are. They can enjoy spending and we can enjoy earning. How much less painful than some grubby little tax collector taking your hard earned cash away - with a snotty reminder not to be so successful. What would you do in their shoes? Exactly what I would do - find ways of not paying tax and leave the country. So then we all have to pay more.

Vince Cable's latest inanity proves the point - even more tax on something you have bought and maintained from already punitively taxed income. Nihilistic. If people, wealthy or not, have money left in their pockets they will tend to spend it - the government can then take its cut from the economic activity. Simply taking more and more of our money before we can use it to live is just asking for every corner of the economy to fail. When we are all on benefits who pays the taxes to pay the benefit? Cable even proposed that people should use equity release schemes to pay tax... how about the Government spending a lot less of our money and a lot more wisely?

Waiting Room

2009-09-20T13:04:00.000-07:00

Noticed how the people who run this country have for the past decade talked about 'the ordinary people', 'average people'?? It sticks in my throat. It is patronising and reduces us, you, me and the millions that they no doubt feel should be grateful to be lead by them, to mere numbers, components in the faceless, heartless machine of 'society'.

We are not numbers - we all have our hopes, dreams, ambitions and fears. They may not matter much or seem very significant to people who believe themselves to be so terribly important but they DO matter and they are important to us and to those around us - to the 'society' that we are a part of. That society is not a machine to told what to do it is a crazy, chaotic, disorganised jumble of our emotional and illogical responses and our needs and fears as people.

Which brings me to the 'Waiting Room' - a group of deliberately stereotyped old dears, at first glance identical, coming and going to the line of seats in the waiting room. Is it a waiting room in the hospital? Or waiting to leave this life? They all have their numbers - the system has them tagged. Look a little closer and they all have their own peculiarities, a little vanity, a politically incorrect vice - a small act of rebellion. Except one, on the left hand side - totally conventional and simply accepting the state she is in, without hope. The counterpoint is the defiance in the figure leaving, looking up, taking a drag on her cigarette.

To me we must act - cry for our freedoms and believe in our humanity before we all become like that accepting figure; a nation of sheep allowing ourselves to merely exist on the states cold charity.