Thursday 4 July 2013

The Flophouse, plus collaborative painting with Matthew Randle

I've been picking up some new things recently, painting again out in the street, I met a new artist / friend and have been working with him.  I picked up a new word.  noncanonical.  I've been using it a lot, it's a good way to dismiss you own work if the project hurt you and other forces from within the project tried to control your hands too much, more than you would like, too tightly to let you do a very good job.   I've had a couple of projects like that recently, in the last couple of years, but now they're done with, the bruises on my wrists have faded and they're noncanonical.  We did a bit of voodoo last year to purify the process a little, we burnt everything that was left over, all the unused plans and unused puppets, and some sage.  The sage bush died over the winter but now I've got a new one . . . for next time.

Oh yeah, I picked up the new word from my new favourite podcast!  The Flophouse.  Check it out!  Actually I have two new favourite podcasts but I'll talk about the other one next time . . . The Flophouse is a bad movie podcast, and it's very very good.  Ugh.  I really like it.  I wish I could talk as well as they do, especially Elliott.  And he makes up songs.  If you want to listen to a podcast that isn't  alpha males shouting at you about annoying stuff they like, well...I'll say this...here are just some funny, nice, clever guys, it's like hanging out with your older brother and his fun friends.  Except I don't have an older brother.  Subscribe to it, it's very good.  Oh yeah so . . . noncanonical.  One of them (Stuart or Dan) applied it to Muppets from Space, and then to any Muppet film that was made after Jim Henson died.  And that made sense to me and now I use it.

Here are some canonical things though:  I have been learning about collaboration, painting some collaborative paintings with Matthew Randle in the countryside, working on the same picture at the same time, painting and re-painting, moving around, mixing colours together, until we get the picture right, he taught me to play chess too and that's what this painting feels like. . . Matthew's work is amazing, he is an inspiring person, he is teaching me a lot and you can learn from him too if you look at his pictures, check him out online  . . .

here are some of our pictures from Cornwall this weekend, in St. Ives and Porthtowan:





                                   












2 comments:

  1. I really like these Matthew. I've been dipping my toes in and out of painting recently. My, but the water's cold. Lovely to collaborate and forget you're collaborating. x

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    1. thank you Joel! it was very absorbing and helped my well being, and recently I just got too busy all over again to do any more. Yes haha the water is cold, I think it was good to be doing this painting this way, it meant I couldn't rely on any lazy landscape painting tricks I had developed in the past, Matthew would just slosh paint over anything that wasn't true . . . so I am excited to do more soon I hope!

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