islands

a professor once told me that the only thing worst than a bad painting is a big bad painting. thats a pretty good observation i think.

outdated

i often try and draw maps from memory. it's a good mental exercise and i enjoy being able to track how my geographic knowledge has changed.

a small joy is looking at an old map that shows countries that no longer exist. the solviet union, east germany, pre-1948 maps that show palestine and not israel, yugoslavia, the congo section of africa. finding a map from a country that reflects a bias on a contested territory is rarely experienced but coveted joy. i saw an argentinian map here in london that listed the falkland islands as the maldives.

print

printing is as simple or complex a process as you want it to be. with me its just an extension of my drawings that i can do at home. i enjoy the repetitive and methodical act of carving and the ability to create multiple of an image is great from my work.

printing, especially on the small scale is an excellent combination of the human and mechanical. the original drawings is human, the the carving and printing process is mechanical, then as you alter the printed image you make it human again. the physicality of printing like this is also refreshing as the digital age, as great as it is, moves further and further away from these techniques.

i am a sucker for the cult of personality. joseph beuys was rescued by the tatar people after his plane was shot down in ww2 and saved only by the animal fat they wrapped him in. picasso, when he was still young and known as pablito, carried a pistol in his belt to prove his manliness. royal tenenbaum died while rescuing his family from a sinking battleship.

all i can say is that if i get alzhiemers when i am older, i hope my family reminds me of the great things i did in my life... like when i ruled circumnavigated the globe in my handglider and when i took vladamir putin to 11 rounds in the middleweight championship but had to which draw because of an open facial wound. those will all be good times.

neon

this is a a scene from a titian painting.

i am a big fan of yellow highlighter. its glows and is difficult to look at, which makes me think that had it been invented when religious art ruled, celestial figures would have neon yellow halos instead of gold. its relatively recent invention emphasises the contemporary. it's radioactive.

it should be said that it is amazingly ugly and kitchy, but that also has a certain appeal.

no title

the book format is appealing because people are comfortable with books. flipping a page creates an implied narrative that i can exploit or manipulate. its also convenient and inexpensive, something paramount to my practice. i like the fact that books are often expected to be practice works, but rarely a final piece. that low-browness is nice.

this is a drawing of the back of my eyelid.

song: santogold- i'm a lady (diplo mix featuring amanda blank)

airplanes

airplanes v cars

cars are far more deadly than airplanes but we still fear driving less than we do flying. a reason that i often hear is that we are not in control when we fly but i am not sure being killed by someone else is less terrifying that being killed by a decision you make yourself. i think it might be an instinctual reaction against something very unnatural. human are not supposed to fly and when you think about it a planes is many thousands of pounds of metal being held in the air only because it is traveling hundreds of miles an hour. at least a steal ship in the middle of the ocean can remain afloat when it sits still. maybe its the prospect of being killed in mass. when a plane goes down hundreds go down with it. however, a bus carries large quantities of people and those go down as well.

with an airplane and the right resources there is nowhere on the planet you can't reach within a day. this only became a reality within the last 30 years. thats an amazing reality when you consider how many empires, nations and wars were built and fought around the ability to clear a mountain range or cross an ocean.