OMG This actually like totally means something?

I can't seem to leave the funnelly theme alone. Not because the theme generates attractive images because they are butt ugly but because the symbolism so neatly portrays the human condition. It's like an exam crib or a mnemonic device for remembering the bones of the wrist. After memorising the image an alien could sit down and write an essay on what it's like to be human. This one has eyes and mouths torn from Heat and Hello magazine and pasted directly onto the canvas. Okay, the images are also slightly creepy; the creepiness is intended to suggest the feelings of alienation concomitant with a sudden awareness of the human condition. I need to get out more. I'll tackle the above design when I've finished the one below.

That's oil pastel on the page and not food. This canvas was intended to take me over the Xmas period but didn't. I celebrated the birth of Christ by making and ingesting enough food to choke a horse. Through a haze of food induced delirium I seem to remember watching a film about giant spiders and then becoming lost in the surrounding countryside in an attempt to walk off the delirium. Rather glad it's all over actually. 

New painting up - the Thespian

The last in a series of paintings exploring the human condition otherwise called the 'weird funnely ones that I don't like much'. http://www.markpeatfield.co.uk/portfolio/page7/index.html
Not actually about my brother David in Hong-Kong who is an actor but rather a reflection on Prospero's final speech and the famous 'As you like it' speech.

Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve;
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. (IV.i.148–158)

and: All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts.

Shakespeare really was the dog's bollocks.

Harris Museum open exhibition

A photo of me standing by one of my submissions. This is the least creepy photo; I don't photograph well. I look like I'm having trouble standing. In another picture I look like a politician canvassing for votes. My paintings did not cause the paradigm shifting stir I'd hoped for but then the lighting was really unkind. And the positioning of my canvases was all wrong. And other stuff. Note to self. Bigger, brighter and more challenging. Just received new canvases so onward ho tomorrow.

Romeo & Juliet - new painting up!

The only reaction I have had to this painting so far is, "good colours" which is a lot like saying "nice notes" to a composer. The painting depicts love and lust and passion and is actually quite risqué albeit in a neo-surrealist nihilistic pop-art way. I blush when I look at it. Two things of note today. I've run out of canvases and I've submitted two pieces to the Harris Institute Open Day.


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Location:New Hall Lane,Preston,United Kingdom

More spoilers

In answer to several questions: yes, the spinning disk and trumpets function a bit like a phonograph. I was going to do another painting along similar lines but I am rapidly losing interest in the symbolism. Maybe there is something to be said for being cryptic.


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Location:Walker Place,Preston,United Kingdom

Adam and Eve - Spoiler warning!

New painting up.
 http://www.markpeatfield.co.uk/portfolio/page7/index.html
Adam & Eve or 'After the fall'.
As promised a quick explanation (but no tinsel) as I do not like be needlessly cryptic. The sphere contains a field of alert awareness for we are what we are aware of. Freely substitute 'Being', 'Buddah nature', 'Christ nature', 'Consciousness' the Kingdom of God or, my favourite, 'foetal awareness' for the term alert awareness. The spinning disc is Mind, a source of largely unproductive and mostly random thoughts - the source of Buddha's suffering. I've read somewhere that the mind generates many thousands of thoughts a day. As conscious entities we watch and hear (lens and small trumpet) what it produces and assume, erroneously, that we are responsible and in control of what is generated. A subset of these thoughts are 'Me' or ego thoughts. Much of what emerges from the eye-trumpet is from the Mind (ego driven drivel). Reality is accessible to the sphere only after coming in from the eye-trumpet. The lens can momentarily raise itself to look above the disc but the lens is heavy and the non-stop thoughts are too compelling - especially if they are 'Me' or ego thoughts.   Before the fall the lens would have effortless roamed the sky to be lost and found in the moment (Tolle's Now). But now it is so difficult. What is more fascinating than what I think and feel and my life story? Nothing, absolutely nothing which is why we are all, for the most part, psychotic.
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Very different

The next painting is going to be very different and will be based on the following sketch.



It's about as bleak as I can get but looks comical. There may even be bright colours. Looks like nonsense imagery but is actually a carefully considered symbol for the human condition. Expressive symbolism? I don't like being cryptic for the sake of it so I may even annotate it. Hell, as it's coming up to Xmas, I might even put tinsel on it.


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Location:Winery Lane,Walton-le-Dale,United Kingdom