Allsorts of Art

Here's another work in progress for 100 Works: a comment on Gormley's Trafalgar Square 'Fourth Plinth' Project. I doubt Gormley's supposedly democratic art work could have happened without the X Factor and the New Labour project of empowering individuals over Working Class activity. The irony of promoting the individual as a commodity is that individuality is lost in the act. Plinths and TV votes don't raise the masses but lower them - at the same time as they lower Art.

Scores of Images for Small Boxes

Here is a very small image - one of very many I'm creating to help fill small boxes of art work and text...

Getting Dental

This pink stuff is the rubbery compound placed in your mouth to take/make a cast for false teeth... "in progress" for my 100 Works.

CHANGES TO RUPERT'S BLOGS

From now until the new year a number of changes will take place to Rupert's Blog and attendant blogs:-

• East Coast Art News has ceased. East Coast Net, the ARC Blog (to which I contribute), The Waveney Valley Blog and Rupert's Blog itself cover all the regional arts and cultural news making East Coast Art News redundant.
• The Heather Poems (Letters) Blog will grow over 2010, along with my Broken Links Blog, which will publish more general poetic contributions.
• My Voice Visual Blog will be retained to develop it into an online Gallery for my own art work, while larger scale projects or more complex projects will appear on my Fifty-Seven Pence Blog.
• The Asparagus Shed will be relaunched soon!

Most importantly, Rupert's Blog (this blog) will be made even more eclectic and magazine like in the new year, while my online magazine textVISUAL will realise a second issue this December.

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The Tom Mallin and Muriel Mallin Galleries will also be updated by the new year, with a new Gallery for the work of Don Rout.

Leaves Like Fireworks

Walked the four miles to my factory studio today. Some of the leaves had dried out from earlier rain and sounded like a fire underfoot. It must be November 5th - just over three weeks left to create over 100 works.

Snow

Last year's rather than an expectation for this winter's fall.

Homage To The Rock Man of Hunstanton

You can find out about the Rock Man of Hunstanton on this blog.

Sea and Soil

A Notebook

A hole in my notebook.

From This...

To This

INSPIRING POET LISA LEAVES FOR AUSTRALIA

I owe a huge debt to poet and organiser Lisa D'Onofrio for bringing me into a group of artists and poets for a collaboative project in Norfolk/Suffolk six years ago. Out of our successful collaboration the InPrint Group was formed.

Lisa's 'Poetry Vending Machine' (details of which you can find out about on this blog) was groundbreaking - in its originality and popularity. It was written about on a Guardian blog and is still an East Anglian reference point when discussing collabrations between poets and artists.

Lisa is now off to live in her native Australia with her family. However, via the internet, the globe can be a small place and I hope we can all remain in contact - to collaborate via the ether!

One way or another Lisa's "vending machine" will live on. Part of the work I'm engaged in via 100 Works is to create word/art boxes 'out of the machine' - together with an actual Poetry Machine (yes, a 'machine' that creates poetry).

Lisa's leaving do can be viewed on the Inprint Website. All wishes Lisa & Co!

Morning Light in The Factory

Morning light enters the factory. I've now had a studio here for two years, ten months.

Colour and Style

I'm dumping some old books as I look through them for source material for my art work but some texts and images are too good for the bin. Here is a wonderful Fifties house - the style, the colour...

Bread, Water, Knife

Bread and water are emotive symbols - as is the knife. These pages are taken from a book 'How To Paint Still Life,' which was reprinted in 1960, so very much in the era of Modernism (although the book speaks of 'modern pattern' rather than abstraction). Through the book we're taken on a painting journey all wonderfully illustrated, step by step.

However, I prefer the draft 'groundwork' painting on the left rather than the finished work. In the draft we know the exact subject matter - bread, water, glass, plates, knife, table, so what is the need to make all appear realistic except as documentation? The first painting is painterly. There is no need to over paint it. Indeed, examine the quickly marked shadow under the knife on the left: it has more depth and thereby 'life' than the finished article.

Also, the over painting adds nothing - symbolically or in a painterly way - to the composition.

What do you think?