Art for art's sake

Further to a previous blog entry, here's the "art" I've been working on.  The photo doesn't capture the real colours of course. I know it's no Picasso, in fact it's probably not even GCSE standard, but it's a fun challenge working with Acrylic paint when you don't really know what you're doing!
 

Advance warning...

I've been painting in recent weeks. A little here and there when I felt inspired, but I found that I don't know how to paint clouds so I've gone all abstract. Here's the proof of my work, with the colourful leftovers of acrylic paint. If you want to see the finished painting (that's on 60cm x 80cm canvas), it's sitting leaning against the wall in the dining room at the moment. Or you can ask me to post a photo of it here. Your choice...

A naked man in my room

For over 20 years, in the various places I have lived, there has been the same picture of a naked man on my wall. It is a print of a huge charcoal drawing that I saw in Bordeaux many many years ago in the window of a gallery. I instantly loved the picture and knew I wanted a copy. The skills required to produce something of this quality are many. Despite the fact that it was hanging on my wall for so long, no-one thought to ask if I liked naked men. I always thought that was odd. For the record, and in case you didn't know, I do like naked men!

But here's the problem... I don't know who the artist is and I want to know. I need to know! On the print, the signature is too faint to make out fully.  It has worried my for years.  Can anyone read the signature and help me out?!

Day 17 - A piece of art: Mondrian

This posting is part of the 30 day challenge...

When you visit a museum that has modern art on show, you will hear people saying "it's all rubbish" and some of it may well be!  But when you ask at the end of their trip, 99% will say that they really liked at least one piece of art.

I have extremely broad taste in art and I cant say the modern art per se, is my favourite 'style'.  However, my choice for this blog posting may not be to everyone's taste - but it fascinates me and I may never know why.

The best space for modern art I have ever been to is Tate Modern in London.  And in one of the rooms is a painting in oil by Piet Mondrian that caught my eye many years ago.  It really is one of those art moments that is impossible explain.  This is just an image of back lines and coloured blocks, but it jumped out at me.  Very similar paintings by Mondrian do nothing for me, so the style alone is not what draws me in.  I hope you like it and get to see the real thing in London.

This is 'Composition with Red, Yellow, Blue and Black' from 1921:

Extremely fine art

Many moons ago, an ex-colleague contributed a guest posting to my blog.  His talented wife, Maryam Foroozanfar is an amazing artist who takes months to construct paintings that will surprise and impress you. You can find details on her web site.

Pete and I are pleased to say that we have one of the few prints of a Foroozanfar is our house and has pride of place near the front door.  

Maryam has featured in the National Portrait Gallery in London and has been a finalist in the prestigious BP Portrait Award.  A couple of years ago, all around London were posters for the event featuring one of Maryam's works, a painting of Konjit who we both used to work with.

If you are in London and get a chance to go to the National Portrait Gallery on Trafalgar Square, you wont be disappointed by the BP award rooms (and entry is free!).  You only have a week to go however.  Apart from Maryams entry, my personal favourites are these two by Lyndsey Jameson and Miichal Ozibko.

Busy busy

It's been a busy weekend so far and there is another bank holiday Monday to come.

On Saturday, Pete and I went to Grand Designs Live at the Excel centre in London as we had free tickets. I had been to the venue before, but the sheer size of the building still astounded me. The show itself was not as good as I had expended - although there were hundreds of stalls and events, it was mainly high end stuff - i.e. expensive everything from furniture to kitchens and swimming pools to power tools. My favourite section was the food area - lots of gadgets and food to try.

On the way back, we called in at Ikea and bought some new furniture for the spare bedroom which we are currently doing up with some cool colours and a new carpet. Ikea was full of North London chavs and as usual, not enough tills were open.

Today I got up early (partly as Pete woke me up constructing the Ikea furniture) and spent a while clearing the garage and building "things" like shelves from an old bed. Recycling in action! I then spent hours painting, which I hate doing.

We then took loads of old wood, cupboard doors and furniture to Pete's mums house and had a massive bonfire. Great for a cold(ish) day like today - Caveman instincts to the fore.

And finally, Crystal Palace played their final game of the season today and managed a draw with Sheffield Wednesday sending the Northern team down and rescuing the Eagles. It's been a crazy seasons with stupid refereeing decisions, cup runs, great results, awful results and a bankrupt club. I am praying for a saviour and it has to come very soon. I'll blog about this again I am sure.

One other thing, when we were in Venice, we found a great gallery called BAC Art and we bought a print of a watercolour - the only obviously gay picture in the house. It's this image on the right... hope you like it too.

Kai Z Feng

Those that follow this blog will know that I take a lot of photographs. I don't have many favourite photographers, but I recently came across Kai Z Feng and was impressed by the simplicity and the humour in the images and I "used" one of his images of Aaron Johnsn in a recent blog entry. Many of them are presented in black and white which is a skill in its own right - I hope to take some black and white portrait shots of friends and family soon.

Kai Z Feng was born in Shanghai and is now based in London. He started his career as a painter and took up photography aged 24. You can see more here, but these are a few of my favourites (I could have included pictures of young ladies, but I thought... why bother!?)

Computer art

Last night Pete and I visited his mum for a cuppa and a chat. It's typical of Pete that he hinted loudly that pancakes would be nice - and she made some! So we had pancakes last night and will probably have some tonight as it's Shrove Tuesday, i.e. pancake day.

Anyway, I was playing around with a paint package on my PC and came up with this piece of original modern computer art.

Copyright Stephen Chapman 2010 - as if you care! Hi-res versions are available for a small fee.


And it's been a long time since I produced a Wordle. So here is one using the ratings and reviews from "The best and worst gay films... so far" blog entry.