Snap Shots From The Month Of June.

June turned out to be a pretty hectic month! I helped organize an exhibition, moved to a new studio, went on a trip to London (for a 50th Birthday party that involved a boat trip on the Thames!), went to visit an old project a year down the line (The Hendra Mural Project in Truro, which is still looking awesome!), visited some old friends in Derby (congratulations to Phil and Sue Cope on their wedding! Great day, and great to see so many old faces from Uni!), landed a massive Public Art Project in Newquay (My A'th Kar NQY is the name of the project, more blogs to follow!), and managed to squeeze in a bit of work along the way too! Here's a few photos!

A New Studio.... Again!

For the 3rd time in 2 years, i have once again had to move to a new studio space! I bloody hate moving, and it's amazing to see how much shit one person can hoard in such a small period of time! For the first time i have moved out of the centre of Penzance, and got myself a place out in the sticks.


I've not quite finished sorting the space out yet, but it's in some kind of workable order for now. I still need to set up my screen printing equipment, as i've got a couple of jobs lined up to print some t-shirts for a local surf shop and a local club night..... keep 'em peeled! Hopefully i will be able to stay in this place for longer than a year, although i'm going to working on site a lot for a very exciting project in the next 3 0r 4 months.

Lost Luggage at Glastonbury!

If you were at Glastonbury this year, you may have stumbled across a very strange little experience late at night in the Shangri-La area. The Lost Luggage Department was a strange mix of performance and party, thrown together by my good friend Joe Gray. He'd constructed what was supposed to the lost luggage department of a Teleport company, and then proceeded to wreak havoc on the punters at Glasto with mischief and mayhem!

Joe asked me if i could come up with a design for him, which he could use as part of the performance. He'd actually built a teleport unit in the corner of this crazy set up, which they were going to magically transport members of the unsuspecting public to strange new worlds!

He wanted me to come up with some kind of in-flight safety card, similar to that which you get on a plane and are supposed to read before take off. Above is my attempt at such a safety card, depicting probable scenarios that could happen during the duration of your jouney in the Teleport machine! Created with hand drawn images, then touched up in Photoshop.

ART75

In the middle of June i was asked to help out with an exhibition in Penzance called ART75. It was an exhibition to celebrate 75 years of Jubilee Pool, the iconic Lido in Penzance. The day was amazing, with 75 artists each showing a piece of work in one of the changing cubicles that line the walls of the pool.

It was a beautiful day, and there were so many people that turned out for a great little exhibition. There were even some synchronized swimming going on too! Above is the piece that i exhibited in the show, called 'This Town Eats It's Young', made with Spray Paint and Posca Pen on A3 paper. Big thanks to Richard Ballinger and Jesse Leroy-Smith for organizing the whole event!

House OF Flying Dragons!

Finally, after the British weather decided to sort itself out, i managed to finish this mammoth project that i have been working on! After an epic 18 day spell of painting, the 'House Of Flying Dragons' has been completed!

It's been a gruelling battle against the elements, which also became a mental and physical battle to bring the project to an end. This has probably been the biggest job i have ever worked on by myself!

I love working on a large scale, but this has to be the largest that i have worked on! It was quite a daunting prospect at the start, but as with everything, once you throw yourself into a project it soon takes on a life of it's own and you kind of get taken along for the ride!

It was an amazing experience in the end, and i couldn't ask for a better location to work on a project like this. I'm hoping to produce some paintings based on the photos that i took over the 18 days of the surrounding landscape!

So now it's back to reality, and packing everything up in my studio to move to a new one! It's now the 3rd time in 2 years that i've moved, and hopefully won't be doing it for a while! So once i'm settled into the new place, i'll hopefully be able to crack on with some new paintings!

I've got a few more large scale projects in the pipeline, so any work i can get done inbetween these will be a bonus. I'll keep you posted on my movements! In a bit!

Rain Stopped Play.

I've been working on this project now for 10 days, and so far the weather has been kind to me.... that is until today! I've had a great run at drawing and painting, but alas rain has now stopped play. Looks like i could be rained off until next week! I was on a proper roll aswell, and could have done with a few more dry days in order to complete the whole thing!

Here's a little update then to let you see how the dragons are progressing. The first one above the garage is nearly completed, just got a few things to touch up on it now. This one goes around onto the back of the house, which i've started painting too. It's been a bit of a ball ache having to climb up and down the scaffold to see what i've been doing!

I've now started to paint the second dragon on the other side of the house. This one is a lot bigger, probably about 35ft! You can see it creeping over the trees from up on the hill behind the house, gonna look ace when it's finished! Will probably set a few tongues wagging within the dog walking community too! I'll post up some more photos as soon as i've finished, and the scaffold's down!

View From The House On The Hill.

I started work yesterday on a mural out at Crows-An-Wra on the way to Lands End. It's a bit of a mammoth task, as i'm painting 2 dragons, 1 either side of the house! The weather has been fantastic, very sunny, but bitterly cold, so i've been up the scaffold wrapped up like bloody Scott of the Antartic! The wind has been blowing a hell of a lot, and it's so far been a hairy experience.

So far, over the 2 days i've managed to draw out the image of 1 dragon on one side of the house, with it's tail and whiskers trailing round on to the back of the house. It's been hard work climbing up and down to the different levels, and getting positioned into the best place for drawing has been a challenge! Progress has been nice and steady, and a random selection of Fugazi, Justin Warfield, Battles, The Fall, Squarepusher, The Beastie Boys, Deftones, Flying Lotus, Autechre and Pop Will Eat Itself on shuffle have been keeping my going in the freezing wind!

So on Monday (weather permitting) it's onto the other side of the house to paint the next creature. Hopefully this won't be as harsh, as the sun comes round to that side of the house from about midday. Bloody lovely view from up there, as you can see from the photo above looking out over the Cornish landscape to St. Buryan. I'm looking forward to the next stage of painting the dragon, and seeing how it takes shape! I'll keep you posted!