I have a love–hate relationship with Facebook. Actually, if I’m honest, the love part is questionable...I usually call it Arsebook. But like many artists trying to get work out into the world, social media is the trial by algorithm we have to endure. The platform has changed dramatically in recent years, and not for the better. I post very little on my personal page now, and my art page mostly mirrors Instagram. I can’t be bothered scrolling through endless adverts just to ca

I put the brush down on my latest piece for Portals Divine a few days ago. It was going to be the last piece in the series, but even as I started painting it, I had the feeling something was still missing. Another masculine piece, perhaps…it’s still crystallising in my thoughts. The latest work itself was intended to be something quite different. It started with multiple faces, which turned into a single face and multiple masks, and then, as I wrestled with the concept, becam

When I booked an exhibition space before I'd painted a single piece... Sometimes you’ve just got to say “what the fuck”… and make your move. (Devotees of 80’s films will know that one.) And I did. I booked an exhibition slot before I’d painted a single piece. Not only that, I had the completely unhinged notion of creating around twenty brand new paintings in eighteen months, an entirely new body of work, and completely different from what I’d been making before. So yes, I sa

There’s always a stage in oil painting where the work is not quite finished, but you can’t actually do any more until it has reached a certain layer of dryness. This is especially true if you want to add something sheer, like see-through fabric, or in the case of my latest piece, street lights. So he’s going to have to sit for a few days before the final fling. I think all paintings arrive with some kind of challenge, but this one wasn’t quite what I expected. And the challen

“Oh Edmund can it be true, that I hold here in my mortal hand, a nugget of purest green” Lord Percy exclaimed excitedly while holding what looks like a solid lump of snot. It’s even funnier when you remember he was trying to alchemise gold. Blackadder’s response to call him an utter berk was probably the right one, but I get it, though. Because I, too, have ‘invented green’. Everyone knows blue and yellow make green, right? Primary school stuff. But what I didn’t know is tha