A detail from another shot in the Lamia photoshootTwo weekends ago my studio in my flat here in Hastings got its first proper use: a session of life-drawing (drawings below) followed by the… Read More

A lot of link dumps on blogs are about techie stuff. This one isn’t. While I do follow some techie blogs, the vast majority of the blogs I follow are about arts & c… Read More

HAG installation, by artist Beccy McCray The Green Man was a term invented by Julia Somerset (Lady Raglan) in 1939 for the various foliate head designs found in… Read More

Sainsbury's Corn Flakes packaging from 1976 - © The Sainsbury Archive, 2024It started off, as these things tend to do, as a light-hearted thread on BlueSky initiated by writer Ray Newma… Read More

Michelangelo, David, marble, 1501–04 (Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence)This post is a follow-up to my post from last year September life-drawing: not safe for whose work? and I… Read More

Two minute concept sketch in pastels on black paper by the authorLamia is a character from Greek mythology who — like many other deities and monsters of Greek mythology — seems t… Read More

The following piece written by me was originally published in volume 3 of Lost Futures zine, published in August 2021 by the now defunct Exit Press. With Lost Futures now out-of-print, it is… Read More

My new studio, slowly getting thereI’ve been living in Hastings for just over three weeks now: slowly finding my feet. My new flat is very spacious compared to my old one in Brighto… Read More

It’s goodbye to living in my Hove garret amongst the rooftops, chimneys, and crows because last week I signed the tenancy agreement for a new flat in Hastings, and I’m moving in… Read More

The political colours of south-east England.Late last week in my current Hove & Portslade constituency the Labour MP (and now cabinet minister) Peter Kyle was elected with a reduced majo… Read More

This is a bit of a technical blog post, but I’ve tried to provide explanations of technical jargon where possible. It starts off with some summaries of what people have discovered o… Read More

Some sample pages of Myth and MasksAs I prepare to move to a new rented property next month I keep looking at all my belongings and want to lighten the load. I’ve got a number of co… Read More

The Houses of Parliament, photograph by the authorWhen you’re planning to move home there’s suddenly a day when the place that you’ve called home stops being home in some i… Read More

Ubiquitous Office ’97 clip art, as found on bad presentations and photocopied fliers everywhere[Forenote: the title of this post references a volume of Spike Milligan’s memoirs… Read More

Three weeks ago I met up with visual arts writer Mark Sheerin to talk about my artwork. I’m delighted to say that the resulting interview has now been published on his site: I don… Read More

A world-famous painting, worth millions of pounds, has been savagely attacked by activists earlier today. The activists have been arrested by police, who arrived swiftly on the scene to asse… Read More

My living area/home office/studio - photograph by the authorI’ve rented a couple of actual artist’s studios in my time. The first was when I was living in the Earlsdon area of Co… Read More

Part of the Hastings Jack in the Green festival in 2023 - photograph by the authorFrom The Guardian in 2011: May Day is a conflation of three traditions. An ancient Celtic and Germanic… Read More

I’ve recently started to feel like my Acid Renaissance series is finally coming to a conclusion. There are perhaps three or four more pieces left to do, after which it will be finished… Read More

Life-drawings from Monday and today (by the author)I’ve taken this week off as annual leave from my day-job, to both get some artwork done and to make sure I use up my annual leave bef… Read More

This post is part of the IndieWeb Carnival, a monthly blog carnival where one person decides on a broad theme that others should blog about. I haven’t done one of these before, but the… Read More

Detail from Saints & MartyrsThis image has been a long time coming. I wrote on here over six months ago about some of the early planning for this piece, and how a lot of the early ins… Read More

In my post last month about life-drawing I mentioned that the amount of oil used in the Faber-Castell Pitt sanguine pencil meant that I couldn’t get the tonal variation from it that I… Read More

Devil’s Dyke, Sussex - photograph by the authorIn a post a few days ago I was writing about the importance of outgoing links as an integral — perhaps the integral — part of… Read More

This is a quick blog post to let you all know that I have an article about my current Acid Renaissance series of artwork in the forthcoming issue of Undefined Boundary: The Journal of Psychi… Read More

View towards the Hope Valley, Derbyshire - photograph by the authorLinks from one page to another are so fundamental to the web that without them it simply would not exist. HyperText —… Read More

On Friday and Saturday I finally restarted the life-drawing thread of my artistic practice after a break since November. Rather than doing several drawings in each session as I have done… Read More

A day may come, as Aragorn might have said, when I finally get back to blogging about my artistic practice — the entire raison d’être of this blog — but it is not thi… Read More

Life-drawing from March 2023 by the authorI deliberately skipped the archetypal “round-up of 2023” blog post, I’m not entirely sure why. I think, for me personally, it m… Read More

Silbury Hill, Avebury - photograph by the authorA post by web developer Jeremy Keith (who, by coincidence, is also based in Brighton & Hove) came up in my RSS feeds today entitled After… Read More

Last week I posted The return of the blogroll (and more), and — typically! — almost immediately afterwards I found out that many people have already been discussing blogrolls ove… Read More

When I completely redesigned this site in September/October of this year I spent a lot of time thinking about this blog section - not just in terms of design and layout, but also about how i… Read More

Previously unpublished shot of The Duellist, part of the Acid Renaissance series, by the author.The Duellist — of which I’ve published two versions: The Duellist (1) and The Duel… Read More

Photograph taken by the author.Back in August I wrote about a lot of online advice for artists is framed around the trappings of corporate capitalism, and my deep-felt aversion to the call t… Read More

The characters C. Auguste Dupin and Roderick Usher in a still from The Fall of the House of Usher. Source: NetflixThis blog post contains spoilers for the 2023 TV series The Fall of the Hous… Read More

Previously unpublished shot from the series Study of a Figure in the Court of Queen Mab, part of the Acid Renaissance series, by the author.As I continue with the final preparation for my Sa… Read More

Vauxhall Bridge over the river Thames, with Aquarius House, St George Wharf, London. Photograph by the author.This is a bit of a ramble, but bear with me. One of the main things I’v… Read More

Some of the code behind this new siteAs you may have noticed (unless you’re reading this post in an RSS feed reader, more on which later) I’ve just re-launched this website with… Read More

Last night brought the welcome return of Brighton’s annual Burning the Clocks procession/event, after a break over the last two years due to Covid. It was loud and joyfu… Read More

Three life-drawings from last weekend. Model’s pronouns: they/them.I managed to fit in a life-drawing session this past weekend, three drawings from it are displayed above. As you c… Read More

No assembly instructions supplied, alasI’m currently planning an Acid Renaissance photographic piece — working title: Saints & Martyrs — which is heavily inspired by th… Read More

My studio (which is also my living room)A lot of online advice for artists is framed around the trappings of corporate capitalism: building your brand, hitting self-imposed targets, maximisi… Read More

Detail from one of my test photographs taken on Friday 28th JulyJuly was starting to look very sparse of any artwork until, I’m happy to report, the final weekend. On the final Frid… Read More

Still from Michael Radford’s film version of George Orwell’s novel 1984This blog post is mainly concerned with the overlapping and/or adjacent spheres of hauntology, folk horror… Read More

Life-drawing from November 2022, pastel on black paper. Model’s pronouns: they/them.I’ve been talking to my regular life-models about gender, particularly with the models who use… Read More

Detail from A Haunting of RosesA Haunting of Roses first appeared as a scribbled note in my notebooks sometime in early 2018. So the idea of a pale figure covered with dying roses and cob… Read More

Three of May’s life-drawingsFollowing on from April’s blog post on my life-drawing practice, I wanted to give a quick overview on what’s been happening in May (even though… Read More

For the first time since I moved down to the south coast I managed to get myself over to Hastings to watch the Jack in the Green festival, coinciding with the fortieth anniversary of it bein… Read More

Details from two of April’s life-drawingsI did two sessions of life-drawing this month, trying to find the media and style that I want to employ, and I think I’m nearly there… Read More

Detail from my photograph “The Historian” (2019)A couple of comments over the past year-or-so have made me think about how I write here. Without going into too much detail the… Read More

One of the Life Drawings available from a drawing session in March 2023I’ve decided to make three of my recent life-drawings, including the one illustrating this blog post, available t… Read More

Detail from the 2021 drawing Lamentation, by the authorMuch has already been said about the championing of individualism over community by the likes of Thatcher and others from the 1980s onw… Read More

Scene from the final episode of Andor season 1. Source: Disney+I’ve mentioned here before that back in the 1970s and 1980s there seemed to be a myriad of ideas about potential future s… Read More

Saturday 1st April 2013 On this day it is 373 years since THE DIGGERS moved onto wasteland at St George’s Hill, Surrey, and began to dig over the land and plant crops. Sunday 2… Read More

My parents moved to Chichester after they’d both retired a couple of decades ago. It’s never struck me as a particularly exciting town. My fat… Read More

Life-drawing, 30 minute poseI took the day off from my day job on Monday — part of my plan to make sure I use all my annual leave allowance before I lose any untaken leave at the end o… Read More

One of my first Mastodon posts was a request: Looking for recommendations about speculative fiction (SF/F, pref. short stories, but novels are fine) set in anarchist communities or de… Read More

Making Mischief is a rather wonderful exhibition at Compton Verney Art Gallery in Warwickshire, and is on until 11th June 2023. The exhibition f… Read More

Wednesday 1st March 2023 On this day is ST DAVID’S DAY, as celebrated by the COMMON PEOPLE of WALES, and the first day of SPRING under the Meteorological calendar. Monday 6th M… Read More

February’s nearly over, and slowly we’re closing in on Spring (even if it doesn’t feel like it at the moment). These dark grey months at the beginning of the year ha… Read More

Wednesday 1st February 2023 Being the start of LGBT+ HISTORY MONTH in the United Kingdom, and the Neo-Pagan/Wiccan observance of IMBOLC. Thursday 2nd February 2023 On this day is the… Read More

Sunday 1st January 2023 Being the NEW YEAR’S DAY of this year. Monday 2nd January 2023 Declared a secular holiday for the COMMON PEOPLE to celebrate the beginning of this NEW YE… Read More

In 1973 British Rail, Britain’s then nationalised railway service (which for the youngsters was, despite the contemporary 1970s jokes about British Rail sandwiches, far better than… Read More

The first three studies from the Court of Queen Mab were large-scale pastel drawings on black paper - there’s also an as-yet-unposted fourth large-scale pastel drawing depicting Qu… Read More

I started working on the Snake Mask in January 2022, and it has sat partially made for a full year now. I think it’s time to finish it. I don’t know why it’s been such… Read More

Last night brought the welcome return of Brighton’s annual Burning the Clocks procession/event, after a break over the last two years due to Covid. It was loud and joyful, as the s… Read More

It’s been a difficult year and I didn’t get much artwork done in 2022. I managed only 3 finished photographic pieces - two Untitled “Moss” pieces (here and her… Read More

The recent change of ownership of Twitter is making a small but growing number of people think about their future on social media, and on the internet in general. You’ve all seen mu… Read More

Life-drawing, 30 minute poseI have been inconsistent with my choice of medium in recent life-drawing practice - alternating between pencils and pastels. I don’t see this as inherently… Read More

First three results from Craiyon using the prompt a haunting of rosesPublicly-accessible AI art tools — Craiyon (formerly DALL-E mini), Midjourney, and the growing number of others &md… Read More

Life-drawing, 1 hour pose (pencil)My plan to re-introduce regular life-drawing into my artistic practice is still going ahead, even though it’s not as frequent as I’d hoped yet… Read More

I’m delighted to say that the Opening Party for my Children of Mab exhibition at Treadwell’s Bookshop went very well, and seemed to be enjoyed by all - thank you to everyone… Read More