The first semester of my new course has been grand to say the least. Since I last posted any artwork on here I have moved on quite a lot and am beginning to make work that really interests me more than anything I was doing before.
The sculptures above are my latest resolved pieces of work. In simple terms they are carbonized loaves of bread, that is to say they are composed entirely of carbon after having been fired in a makeshift charcoal burner. I find them quite curious objects in themselves when presented in this minimal way. My one way of explaining what I was doing is that I took a very simple and recognisable, yet chemically complex object and turned it into a chemically very simple but less recognisable object.

In other news I will be showing a piece of work at the PARK12 exhibition in Cannizaro Park on the 10th and 11th of March.

Wimbledon College of Art

Now then.
The new academic year has brought with it a new academic establishment in the shape of Wimbledon College of art! There is a fantastic atmosphere here and a very positive working environment that is helping me to push myself in new directions.

After a long summer of laikin' about I am finally getting back into the flow of making, thinking about and enjoying art.

As soon as I can afford a camera I will be uploading pictures of the new work I am making and the work I am surrounded by at art school.

That's enough writing for now.

apologies

Apologies for the long absence from the blogging world, this is largely due to my lack of camera to take pictures of my work with however fear not, i am back again...

  As of September I am going to be a student of Wimbledon School of Art studying sculpture. Yes, sculpture. There has been a sharp turn in the direction of my work into the realms of sculpture. After making this change in my work I have felt a lot less anxious and now have a clear path in front of me.   
In other news I have just finished my foundation at Byam Shaw, I am very sad to leave after such a short period of time because it has given me so much. It has made me discover a lot about art and, more importantly at this stage, the art I want to make.

This may look like a simple stone coloured moundy thing but I assure you, I came on a long journey to get to this stage. Here's the short version.
Having been frustrated at art school by painting I decided to get back to my roots and make a sculpture from materials from my fields. The idea of making mud pies again inspired me so i went about crafting an earthen mound with the intention that people might feel the need to climb it and conquer it. Over time I wanted things to grow on it and it to be weathered away. However things did not go all to plan. 24 hours later a man in his 80s had destroyed it by putting his wellington boot right through it. This was confusing. I liked that it had caused this reaction but I didn't get to do with it what I wanted so I thought for a while about my next mound and came to the conclusion that the next one had to be welly-proof.
My solution is making my mound with ancient building techniques that are more or less carbon neutral. The mound has a mud and straw core with a lime mortar rendered on the surface.
Thanks to an octogenarian menace I have come up with something much better than a glorified mole hill. 

Drawings and Painting

Here's the remainder of my work from the past couple of weeks continuing with the same themes as before. I have also put up some images from a day of life drawing at Byam Shaw and the Prince's Drawing Trust

We're at the time of year in the foundation studio where i hear the phrase 'I want to kill myself' more than once a day. Yes! That's right, we're all preparing work  for out portfolios so that we might stand a chance at getting into a decent art school. There has been plenty going on at Byam Shaw School of Art including not least of all the big scary people at Central Saint Martins trying to ruin everything here. As it turns out they are more or less doing away with Byam Shaw as a School and just using it as a bit of extra studio space. There will be no fine art foundation any more!!!!! CSM has also decided that it is a good idea to put all of its students into one big art student factory near kings cross next year instead of having a few nicer sized buildings dotted around central London. ANYWAY rant over. I don't want to turn into a ranter.  

Here are a few images of my work and a few sketchbook pages to boot! When It's all down here on little JPEGs it doesn't actually look like I've done that much work but it certainly feels like I've had my nose t't grindstone for a while. 

Salman Taseer as Saint Sebastian. If any of you have been keeping up with world affairs recently you will know that the Pakistani governor Salman Taseer was assassinated by his security guard because Taseer was opposed to the country's blasphemy laws. I had been looking a lot at religious art and saw an obvious parallel between this incident and the martyred saints. 

various pictures from the first 2 months of foundation

Here are a few pictures from various projects undertaken at Byam Shaw over t'past couple of months, loads more photos to come once I get round to it. Unfortunately my memory stick was lost in the post so it might take me a while to get the pictures but I will get them eventually!! Apologies for the massive delay since the last post on here, I've just been too busy to think about blogging and there was the slight technical problem of not having a computer until 2 weeks ago (thanks mum).

This wax scultpure is a piece for my most recent project 'Sci-Art'. I've been looking at cybernetics (mixing humans and machines) and asking questions about where this is taking evolution and the moral problems asociated with it. This piece is a study for 3 paintings I'm about to start next week.

Camouflage project + subsequent painting from it.

Here are a couple of transcription drawings from the Rubens painting 'Samson + Delilah'

Spacial construction. The brief was to bridge some sort of gap in space so I looked at the gap between inside and out.

Still life of some tea cakes. mmm

Summer Project: Self Portrait in a Double Space.

Here is the finished article the culmination of a summer holiday's work. I really enjoyed being given an actual task to do rather than just being totally free because it sort of forced me into exploring one topic deeply. I think that compositionally this whole piece is quite interesting with all the different angles and perspectives. I'm not really that good at writing all my thoughts about the painting down because I don't really want to sound like too much of a dick so I'll write as little as possible and let people make up their own minds about it.

  

couple of recent life drawings.

Unfortunately my time as a regular at Red Brick Mill has come to a pause (I won't say end) and I am very thankful of all they have taught me and everything I have picked up there. Thanks especially to Tony and Tom who gave up a lot of their time for me this summer.  

With only 3 days now before I enrol at CSM this whole moving away from God's own country thing is beginning to dawn on me and I am already planning trips back home. 

Nib pen drawings.

Here are some drawings of various animal sculptures by artist Brendan Hesmondhalgh.