Bubbles, featuring Skratchet. This was pretty much where this collection all began back in 2003 with my installation at Spier Wine Estates. The installation was then reworked for interior display and I revisited it again thsi year, finally resolving the sculptures beneath the bubbles.

My exhibition In Visible Friends opened last night. Here is a selection of images from the event. I'll put up images of the individual pieces later, when I have some time. Thanks to everyone who was there, it was a really great evening.

Like Me, 2007
acrylic on canvas, 1000x600mm


featuring Peach

A prelim design for a new painting, possibly to be called Pop go the cloauds 1. Its going ot be 1,8x1,5m. Htis and the number two in the series will be the biggest canvases I've painted. They're fun. The colours in this design are nothing like the final version. I thought that thsi colours scheme would be far too heavy on a large scale, or rather that such a dark painting would distract from the other works that will be n my exhibition.

i did a lot of work on different versions in different colours of this design. This was one that I especially liked, although I chose not to produce it. The one I chose was a bitmore subtle, an I thought would make a better large scale work. the 1x1m square canvas should be finished in a couple of days.

these are two characters that I made as the start of a sort of pop-spiritual iconography that I wanted to develop in my paintings. the one that's a pencil sketch made it into a painting in very pastel shades that are so light that its impossible to photograph nicely, so I won't post it. I've had to leave this theme behind for the moment, as the work I'm producing for my up-coming exhibition has taken a different, and I think simpler direction. I'll get back to this in November. It's one of the elements that I was working on that I've been very sad to leave behind.

I finished painting The sculpture of Dash a couple of days ago. It gave me way more trouble than I'd counted on, but its done now. So now I need to get stuck into my painting again. Boy am I tired.

Here are a few screenhots rom A4, the second video to feature Skratchet, alongside Gobo, one of my oldest characters and the oldest character that I still work with.

This is a hand drawn, photoshop coloured cell animation, edited in After Effects and Premiere. It is styled on classic side-scrolling platformers, with lots of paralax-scrolling in the abckground. It's about their lives and how they're surviving, they go to see a film and talk about stuff. People thought it was funny. It got screened at Straight to Video 2 and the 2004 Brett Kebble Art Awards.

This is the first appearanc of Skratchet.

A very short (I think 53 sec) stop-frame animation called a.sort. He was simply obsessed with sweeping up dead bugs and things.

These are two different designs for the image on Skratchets t-shirt. The one with the rolling hills is closest to the one that made it onto the shirt for the sculpture featured in 'Bubbles', although I dropped the rainbow and the mauntains.

This was the second time I worked with Skratchet.
The first time was in the only claymation stop-frame animation that I ever made.

This was an installation called 'Bubbles' that was on the Spier wine estate for the second outdoor sculpture biennial they had there.

I later adapted it for indoor display with a wooden base that saved me from having to install the piece in the actual surroundings. cutting holes in the grass and genrally digging holes to sink supports into was no fun at all. Also, although I really liked the sculpture being in the same environment as the viewer when it was presented outside, it never worked quite as well for me indoors. I still haven't worked out why. I expect I shall figure it out soon.

I thought that I'd have finished this sculpture by now, but I have gotten involved in presenting a paper at a museums conference and its taking way longer to deal with than I'd anticipated. Writing is hard and even harder when you're as out of practice as I am. Art is easier, I can see the whole piece at one time.

Anyway, here are some pics I've been meaning to post of the construction of the sculpture that is nearly-but-not-yet finished. His name recently became Dash, and I think that this name will stick. I really like all of the dictionary definitions of the word. They fit his character.

One image shows his frame and the other shows the mess of polystyrene and polyeurahane that he is carved from before the shell layer is applied.