Sunday 21 June 2015

Collaboration with Barry Thompson


Artist Barry Thompson and I are both fans of this National Gallery painting of Saint Veronica from 1420. Legend relates that when Christ fell as he was carrying the cross Saint Veronica wiped his face with her handkerchief (sudarium). The image of Christ's face was then miraculously imprinted on it.
The saint's name is inscribed on her halo in Latin (Sancta Veronica); Christ's halo has an abbreviated Greek form of his name (ihs.xp.ih.x). Barry and I are currently working on a drawing based on the painting. I'm drawing Jesus and Barry is doing all the tricky bits.

Collaboration with Hugh Mendes


Hugh Mendes has made a name for himself making paintings based on newspaper obituaries.
In Jan 2015 two Police officers Ahmed Merabet, 42, and Franck Brinsolaro, 47, were shot dead by Siad and Cherif Kouachi, during their attack on the offices of French satirical magazineCharlie Hebdo. I asked Hugh to help me make a painting of Ahmed whose death moved me.

Thursday 4 June 2015

Collaboration with Emma Coleman

Emma Coleman and I have known each other a long, long time. She contributed to two shows I curated ("Four By Four" and "100 Mothers"). I found a cartoon of Richard Nixon by Philip Guston. I had an idea we could somehow turn the small b&w cartoon into a large full colour painting. Emma talked about the Frost/Nixon film and suggested we also painted David Frost. I said we could have 2 seperate paintings and then she came up with the idea of the Frost and Nixon both being on a TV screen. Below is a work in progress of the Frost painting...

Here's Emma with the end result...

Collaboration with Astrid Horkheimer



Astrid Horkheimer and I have had fun collaborating on several collages. Including some like the one above that will feature in a promo video for a song by Micko Westmoreland. Recently we made a collage featuring 42 images of Elvis Presley (Sadly 42 is the age Elvis was when he died). The image below is a detail of a work in progress.