After my first two attempts (here and here) I finally think I’ve cracked it with this painting, and it only goes to prove what I learnt a long time ago: when in doubt, paint it black.
Turbowolf – Ghost Hunt
Then… Turbowolf!
The Silence
As I approached the end of Project Mogwai, I began to dream of collecting together all the Project Mogwai paintings and offsetting them with photographs, scrawled epigrams and found materials, in much the same way that George Shaw did with his excellent book I.D.S.T. I’d even found the perfect cover – a shredded and scorched [...]
Headpress Fear Mogwai
Breaking news! Headpress, Britain’s and indeed the world’s premier journal of the unterkulture, will be publishing some of my paintings from Project Mogwai in their next issue. Editor and publisher David Kerekes has been a long-standing supporter of my work, and I think something of mine – be it an illo, an article or a [...]
Camden Brain Slurry
Here’s my latest painting, completed last night as the awesome sounds of the song that inspired it reverberated through my psych skull. Bristol and indeed England’s premier freak rockers The Heads have been at it for twenty years now, damaging brains across western Europe with their unique brand of sonic oblivion. Earlier this year Rocket [...]
Again, Speedwolf
A couple of week’s ago I finished the ‘Speedwolf’ painting (see original post) but I was never completely satisfied with it. I know Bernie Wrightson has convincingly argued that no painting is ever finished, merely “abandoned” but usually when I think I’ve taken an image as far as I can, it releases its hold upon [...]
Black: Implication Flooding
I mocked-up this cover a while ago, and remain so pleased with the result that I thought I’d share it with you all. The album itself is - if you’re at all familiar with the ouevre of Keiji Haino - pretty much par for the course, with Boris adding little except increased volume. It’s the usual absurdly exagerrated [...]
Speedwolf
One working method I find useful is to dream up some imaginary ‘brief’, the crazier the better, and just see what comes pouring out of the brainpan. In this instance it was: a gang of rough trade 1950’s bikers approach Francis Bacon to design an insignia for their club. I was just finishing the painting [...]
Who Put Bella In The Wych Elm?
Some trees obviously – it’s very strange and marked – seem to prefer the human.”
Algernon Blackwood, The Man Whom The Trees Loved
April 18th 1943. Four teenage boys from the village of Lye, near Stourbridge are out on a bright and sunny day with their lurchers, poaching for rabbits and bird-nesting in nearby Hagley Wood. With [...]
My Neighbour Satan
No, this isn’t a portrait of my neighbour, it’s what came out of my brain when I was listening to Boris. I’d been pushing paint around on the canvas for weeks, getting increasingly frustrated with my timidity and constantly scrubbing out and overpainting what I’d done. And then, with the sound of demented JapRock rattling [...]
Kurtz’s Shroud
Here’s my latest painting, finished just this morning. Yeah, so much for me going lighter. “I used to be dark, then I got darker…” This is no scream from a man on the edge though. This was inspired by a recent re-reading of Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness, which has so many great lines in it, [...]
