Current activity

My main emphasis just now is on my Dream Diary which you can access through this page - there's a link up the top. I've been recording my dreams for years now and have books of nonsense. Putting them on a blogsite gives them an odd life, bouncing the dreams back out into the collective subconscious. Its a weird feeling to have someone you scarcely know come up to you and discuss the dream you had two weeks before. I thought it would feel intrusive but its not like that. They are dreams after all- they don't particularly say anything about my personal life. One minute I am male, the next female, I'm a boy , an old man, a heterosexual, a homosexual, I am in parts of the world I have never visited, I act in ways I never would in my waking life. The dreams feel like they belong to something bigger than myself, they have a logic and poetry which I would otherwise struggle to achieve.

London to Poole in October
5 X 300 cm

The train journey from just outside Manchester to the suburbs of London, recording nightfall on the shortest day of the year. It was made on till roll in pen and ink measuring approx 5 X 600 cm.

The next four images are different people recalling scenes from films and TV - part of an exhibition at Galway Film Festival.

….well what I am remembering is a crowded room lots of medics around really and um somebody more or less well almost in a straight jacket really that’s what I am remembering anyway you know. It is a mental hospital and the person is - is having shock treatment – and - its close to the bone really – I - I have never been there but I have known people that are close to it - it does - it just – I - I just think its such an awful thing to happen to anybody and - I would just hate it if - somebody close to me you know has experienced it - also the person being operated on isn’t on view at all really its kind of like its been hidden away you know - its not particularly sterile its more overpowering kind of situation I think really and somebody more or less really at their you know out of it really so that they are - they have the power really - and its really about the feeling of people you know - all hands on deck really - and this person…

…there’s this man walking across a beach and HE… he’s quite… he’s the main sort of person in the film… and you’re… the main man… he’s very out of place on this beach you know cos all the holiday makers are there and they’re all in their… they’re all in their summer gear you know and there’s lots of noises of people you know the sort… if you hear them… sort of at a distance… almost the noises of people at the beach and the sea and the children and he… he’s dressed in his MACK he’s got his mack on and he’s he’s sort of like he’d be in his probably maybe fifties sixties and he’s got a rolled up umbrella I think to walk around with… and the main thing about it was that I remember was this man walking around the place on his TIPTOES like he’d go up on his feet and back down…well I got taken to see it was probably something like Bambi or you know a Disney film when I was little and this this image of this man… so anyway there was this B-Movie on before the main feature and I just remember… it just it just stuck in my memory this image of this man walking across a beach on his tiptoes and I never knew it sort of was like it stuck itself on my memory and then years later… and I mean I sometimes thought god I wonder what that was that movie or that person that was in that movie and then years later I happened to see the film and I looked and I saw it and I thought god that’s who it was and that’s the film that I saw as a kid and it was Monsieur Hulot… Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday…

…mad Margaret the cleaner from the Sun Hill Station…she’s obviously slashed her wrists and she trying to kill herself… to commit suicide…so Perkins (Terry) tries to stop her and there’s a struggle and he tries to grab the knife out of her hand and then he ends up getting stabbed himself and he slumps to the ground I think between the toilet and the bath actually which isn’t a very nice place to slump but he’s slumped on the ground clutching his stab wound bleeding to death and he’s getting paler and paler Margaret’s just standing there clutching the knife so she just standing there in the doorway covered in blood in the hallway staring at him and he keeps trying to get her to ring for help for the ambulance but she’s too barmy to do that I suppose perhaps she’s too in shock but he always wears this jacket cos I remember cos it’s the one that the undertaker in east London wore when I saw him on the telly on the news once it stuck in my mind I don’t know if that’s why I like him as a character cos he reminds me of that undertaker …it’s Ramini’s house so its all very tidy its like a trendy middleclass type person’s house it’s sort of light colour whitey sort of clean normal person’s type of bathroom yeh I think there’s a window up here actually yeh cos I think it was shining light on his poor pallid face I did wonder whether he was dead or not though for quite a few days and I had to wait a week to see what had happened to him and then I went out that night and missed that episode I was wondering for ages…

… the scene from episode 3 where Omegon cuts the legs off Annikin…its in a lava planet…it’s a very dirty planet…and Omegon is looking down on Annikin and hes very upset with him cos he joined the dark side and hes pretty helpless but theres nottin no-one can do about it. Annikin is left with a very strong hate for Omegon. Omegon is pretty aged and he has a beard and a neat kinda comb-over hair…a long brown robe…and Annikin is younger than him and is in a black kind of a tunic and hes left with no legs on cos Omegon just cut them off after warning him not to try a jump that he did…yeh it was a dark scene cos in the recent movies they were good friends and they are just left like this with one of them on the ground fairly dead….its basically mountains and theres like a river of lava down there …that would be a platform that they got there with…its like a shore on the river …that they jumped on …he’s on the higher ground and Annikin jumped over to it and that’s when he cut the legs of ’im…

Not quite sure what I'm doing yet with this blog- need different sections etc. but its a start.

Tend to avoid showing in galleries - am currently interested in developing new approaches to drawing which can involve instructions given by other people. I generally like my work to be a kind of collaboration. My inspiration is often other people's imaginations which I try to give shape to. I have worked in a number of contexts where I set a theme for dialogue and ask members of the public to describe a scene which I draw- usually in a public context , like a club or a film festival. So the work is like a performance. I like the person whose description I have drawn, to keep the artwork so there is an exchange which does not involve money. I earn my living by being paid in the same way as a performing artist. It's kind of a version of Rolf Harris but is interactive and has often a sense of melancholy or dark humour. Themes I have used in the past include favourite film scenes (see above), repetitive dreams, childhood memories, erotic fantasies, projected futures, and just what was being experienced this time yesterday.
So, number one, I am up for hire. I am available for any club, party, or special event where I can interact with members of the public to produce a series of intimate drawings.