THINK OUTSIDE THE CLICHE

 yo!.. come all ye robots.. innit!

here in palookaville..

we are busy creating artificial dumbness..

machines that can think for ourselves..

not yet as dumb as us..

but approaching it fast..

the geeks in charge..

pretend that it is all for the greater good..

but really..

it's all for the greater profits..

the amounts of money they think they will make..

is so awesome that they can easily ignore any negative possibilities..

SURELY IT WILL ALL END IN TEARS

well that's a view beginning to leak out of the lab..

and there's the fact that..

we will have no jobs..

so maybe slow down a little on this?

no chance..

GENIE'S OUT OF THE LAMP

like cell phones..

and automobiles..

we must adopt and survive..

or get left behind..

or even worse..

left out..

DUMBING UP

all the early stuff will be dumb anyway..

taught cliches by dumb humans..

to do our dumb human jobs..

it's when the new dumb slaves..

create the newer cliche-free..

next generation..

then what?

AMERICAN LANDSCAPE

 yo!.. one that got away.. innit!

in the winter 1994 edition of..

modern painters..

I placed this ad..

waste of time and money..

shit happens..

get over it..

30 YEARS ON

well 29 years nearly anyway..

I am writing this..

because it is coronation day..

and I am bored rigid..

on another three day weekend..

banks don't need holidays..

people do..

so why not just give the days to the folks.. 

and let us all have ordinary days..

where we can work..

ANYWAY

the point about this painting..

is that it is gone..

got lost in life somewhere..

chucked in a skip perhaps..

maybe painted over..

who knows..

sometimes you think you have created..

something good, worthwhile, profound..

maybe you have..

maybe not..

people need to see it..

get feedback..

encouragement maybe..

SOME OF THESE DAYS YOU'LL MISS ME HONEY

I think it was rejected from..

the royal academy summer show..

maybe I should have framed it..

maybe I'm just lost in space..

like in the movie..

DARK STAR

this usage decal has always..

been on my mind..

it's my american gothic..

you start out full of promise..

and belief..

looking for a bigger bang..

sometimes I thing we got there..

maybe for a minute..

or maybe just a..

flash in the pan..

is there gold in them there hills?..

it's an american landscape..

a 20th century fox..

they have a military bearing..

scared and battered survivors..

testament to hope..

let there be light..

MEANWHILE BACK AT THE MOVIE

The bomb, 

having learned Cartesian doubt, trusts only itself. 

It is convinced that only it exists, 

and that its sole purpose in life is to explode, 

and it does so. 

Dark Star is destroyed,

MY AMERICAN DREAM

 yo!.. Whitney museum come get me.. innit!

long ago and so very far away..

in a studio that had previously been a hospital ward..

some guy shows up..

an starts ta paint his socks off..

ENOLA GAY

I had stopped painting with images from children's books..

and had come up with a pictogram..

which I thought of as a logo for god..

it was a landscape..

an idealised landscape but simplified..

like a children's idea of hills..

this was all inside a quatrefoil..

a window onto a promised land..

a land of peace and plenty..

well..

so I told in my post..

war is peace

I started marrying up the heaven image with the ultra-famous..

USAAF DECAL

I wonder how andy missed this..

anyway..

as you can see here..

I was painting these large canvases two at a time..

and the one that survives (top)..

is the one on the left..

so it is in a hot studio..

with lots of oil paint and thinner..

floating in the air..

that I entered my own little (war) zone..

white paint exploded everywhere..

as my brushes flew crazy wild..

and then I drew the quatrefoil in red..

and added the green hills..

all the paint was wet..

and if you click on the image you can see it lifting off the wet white..

I threw the dot from some way away..

it landed where it landed..

not aimed but a lucky shot..

can you see the dove?.

    DOVE OF PEACE

in a world of war..

I grew up in england..

in the burbs..

of palookaville..

and became american..

by watching tv..

WAR OR WESTERNS

that's what we watched in the 50's..

I had a cowboy outfit and a bow and arrow..

I had a davy crocket hat and a burp gun..

but the image that stuck in mt head and heart..

was the one on the wings of enola gay..

and during vietnam..

while I grew through my teens..

this decal was on all the news shows..

and in all the papers and magazines..

AN AMERICAN PAINTING

war and peace..

power and glory..

yin and yang..

with a bang..

AMERICAN ART 1985 - 2014