WRECK THIS FEAR
For her birthday some months back my daughter was given a book called ‘Wreck this Journal’ by one of her school friends. She didn’t seem all that interested and I never even got a chance to look at it until, together with another friend, she stumbled across it today. It’s a book with mainly...
WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!
I’m beginning a new project inspired by The Ebb Tide, a short novel that Robert Louis Stevenson wrote together with his stepson Lloyd Osbourne in his late years. Yesterday I received a bunch of books I had ordered for my research including a biography of Stevenson by Claire Harman. As you do with biographical books...
STRANGE ART FOR A STRANGE PLACE
It’s been quite a few weeks since I opened my installation in Majorca and I can now look back at it with some perspective: it’s got to be the strangest project I’ve ever done. I certainly didn’t set out to do anything weird but you don’t get to do a project for an olive oil...
WORKING WITH THAT ‘EL GRECO’ GUY
I’ve used golden paint before and have been wanting to use it again for some time, but the real novelty for me has been working around previous paintings. I’ve dealt with music, literature and films in my projects, but painting about other people’s paintings just never seemed right to me, like the work’s...
THE SIMPLE SEA
I was rummaging through endless files on my computer this morning, looking for some images I need and can’t find and came across an image I don’t need but haven’t looked at for years. That of a sculpture called Mar (Sea) that I made as a student, must have been 1997. I look...
HENDRIX’S LAST BASEMENT
Maybe Hendrix died in a basement, I don’t know. This basement is covered in vomit – Isn’t that what the paint splashes on the floor are? – as a reminder of the cause of his death and a warning of what could happen to any of us if we chose his lifestyle. The...
THE BIRTHDAY PARTY
A Studio With a View is a year old today! I’ve never been very good with birthday parties, save Harold Pinter’s extraordinary play and Nick Cave’s gothic rock band. I’ve had an excellent time writing about art and books and music and other things I like to waste my time with, and would...
NEXT STOP MIAMI!
In 1972 Olivier Messiaen travelled around the American West in search for inspiration for Des canyons aux étoiles, the composition he was working on to a commission to celebrate the bicentenary of the United States Declaration of Independence. Last year I began working on a painting and sculpture project inspired by Messiaen’s music...
DRAWING THE SUMMER
After obsessing with my artwork and exhibitions throughout the year I find that relaxing and not thinking about art is difficult when the summer comes. Swimming and going to the beach work wonders, but funnily enough what I find really works is… drawing; straightforward unpretentious drawing from life. I carry a sketch book and bunch...
LOOKING WEST!
My exhibition in Seville has just come to an end but I’m now fascinated by a joint project that has arisen from it totally unexpectedly though it feels as though it has always been there, like it had to happen sooner or later: Part of my project will be exhibited this week in...
THE BLANK GALLERY / LA GALERÍA EN BLANCO
Some months ago while I was in the early stages of Of Canyons and Stars, my art project that’s just gone on show, I wrote about the implications of the blank canvas, and as I worked on the installation of the exhibition a few days ago, shuffling the paintings and sculptures from one...
GALLERY TIME / HORA DE GALERÍA
The chaos in my studio has finally come to an end and my new project, “Of Canyons and Stars” is packed and ready to travel to the gallery in Seville where it will be on show as from Thursday 23rd of May (opening 20:00). “Of Canyons and Stars” is a project based on...
All schools should be art schools.
