Spilt Milk and Firing Blanks..

I was reading a review of my friend Pete Astor’s new album ‘Spilt Milk‘ on Fortuna Pop..sounds great I have to wait until birthday for my vinyl copy. I have the Mr Music 7″ and both covers excellent by artist Matthew Sawyer.

Anyway I digress. In the review the reviewer said Pete had had a Mike Yarwood moment after years of trying out various ‘disguises’ he had returned to Richard Hell/Velvets jangly indie popdom and it suited him. Well as I same age and had my share of ‘guises’ I beginning to feel same about painting and drawing.

Confronted by a wall of blank canvases ( coincidentally the name of this blog 🙂 I return to square one too…

blanks

I looked out my old Degree thesis ( yes I still have it and my essays as marked by John A. Walker and Bette Spectorov). Which was on Howard Hodgkin who my biggest influence at Hornsey. It wasn’t a great thesis ..I left it too late to do a good job and it blew my chance of a first :-(.

Here a largish painting in oil on board from 1979 I think I can see there traces of mark-making,  Hoyland and John Walker who big at time and Howard Hodgkin in use of colour and form.

garden

I am deliberately starting slow and small this time as last year’s paintings tended in opposite direction. I also going to move away from total abstraction and painting over the ‘1977’ series from last year which just didn’t work.