Villiage Thrift Delights

Suburban Marland.

Stan Brakhage: window water baby moving.

I am an awful blogger. However, I forget that

blogging is a method of documentation that helps the lazy.

I hope to use this as a vehicle to prevent cardiac arrest in Baltimore, because inevitably I will loose all of my sketchbooks that I've made as that's just how I am...

Baby these are cold hard times.

Yiddish Musical Delight in the form of...

I enjoy painting in pastel colours. I also enjoy the musical group The Pastels.

This week marked the beginning of the Glasgow Film Festival, however despite anticipating having lots of time to enjoy it, a surprise hand-in for art school has meant I have had to miss most of it. Despite this, I did cheekly make time for the 'Radio Magnetic: Independant images from the independant music scene in Glasgow'. The videos shown spanned a thirty year period of the Glasgow music scene, starting with the Orange Juice classic 'Rip it up and start again'; the minute I heard the lovely Malcolm Ross guitar riff, I knew something beautiful was going to happen. Another of my favourites was to play soon after with The Pastel's 'Crawl Baby', I adore this video for a number of reasons but the main one is that it made the walk to jury serivice during the summer that bit sunnier as the video was filmed on the clyde suspension bridge. Those to follow did not fail to impress, one particular was The Wake's 'Talk About the Past', not being totally farmiliar of this band I was ashamed to discover that they were signed to the wonderfully twee, Sarah Records; a record label I thought I knew well. Disgraced of my ignorance I shall now listen to them constantly. Other gems included: Lloyd Cole's 'Brand New Friend', Arab Strap's 'Love Detective' and the lovely 'Look after your wife' by Lord Cut Glass. One that really caught me out was Sister Vanilla's 'Can't Stop the Rock'. Although only released in 2005 it has played a significant role in my love of music, I distinctly remember buying this single at Avalanche records and running to catch the next train home so that I could listen to it. This also propelled me to start listening to the Jesus and Mary Chain as it marked the reunion of William and Jim Reid, having William Reid as Producer and Jim Reid singing on the B-side 'Song For a Secret' . The videos were finally summed up by the wonderful and quite contrasting, inclusion of Hudson Mohawke's 'Joy Fantastic' which, much to my surprise, included the enchanting dancing of my dear friend Chalotte Hess. Overall, this was a wonderful compilation of Glasgow favourites. These surprising twee delights and catchy tunes have reminded me that Glasgow really has produced some musical greats.

New work.

I have found that recently in the studio I've spent so much time trying to prepare grounds and canvas correctly that when I finally come to paint something, I have forgotten what I wanted to paint in the first place. Thus, the lesson learned here is that you must ALWAYS PREPARE.

So having spent the last two weeks preparing cotton fabric on stretchers i've finally started painting.

This year I've tried to make work in a more organic way, instead of systematically making something I think would look aesthetically 'good', I want to make work that I can say comes directily from what i'm interested in. Through tutorials and crits i'm realising more and more that I always want to be anecdotal. Telling stories of the types of people I know or have met. I want to try and to this through painting.

Kitsch, narrative, figure painting. With a wee bit of Agnes Martin meets Hammer Horror in there.

"I see a little sillouetto of a bam,

addidas, addidas,

will yeh show me yer giro?"

Katie Price marries Alex Reid.

Are we happy?

....and after that we had a disco.

Last night we hit some openings, went too late for the free booze so we had to enjoy the art without it; this was a difficult task. JUST KIDDIN SON.

First stop was CCA's latest solo show by LA artist Frances Stark 'there will also be things that I don't like' . Beautifully currated exhibition. Also puzzled as to what she uses to prime her canvas pieces? A mystery.

Washington Garcia showing video collaboration between Erica Eyres and Michelle Hannah, which was wonderfully kitch. Further reseach has found the beautiful and quite funny drawings by Eyres. We also caught a beautiful photo of Max looking down to earth (he's quite tall)

Older work.

Miroslaw Balka and the scary box.

At school today I learneded about...

A man I already had a considerable amount of affection for....Jean Luc Goddard.

Now I could sound terribly over sentimental here but I shall risk it. Today, my 15-year old self was awakened and I was reminded of the wonder that is the French New Wave. The first time I saw Jules et Jim I remember feeling utterly in amazement at a film that didn't confide to the Hollywood cliche, yet still had enough richness.

Another wonderful aspect of many of these films is Jean-Pierre Léaud's beautiful face>

Donna's tattoo.

What's this Blogging bussiness EHHH!?

The Idea of this Blog is to create an online sketchbook that allows me to write down my ideas and thoughts without having to use glue.

I'll start with a picture of my favourite man, Matt McGinn.