Recent things
Mid-life crisis spray painting excursion
Work has been a bit full-on in recent weeks, so that, in combination with life in general has made personal creative pursuits quite challenging… however there are a few things I’ve done that I haven’t shared on here yet.
Firstly I realised I haven’t mentioned October’s Digging 4 Victory show that I only got around to uploading last week… you can catch that here
I couldn’t get my act together for a November show, but I will be trying my best to get one done for December, this will be broadcast live at 10pm on the second Thursday of the month following the Polystylism show on the Fly Casual platform (the new venture from Waxer following the closure of Disco Scratch).
Speaking of which, I thoroughly recommend you check out Repo136’s recent ABU show that was broadcast this week that sees the host “trawl around the 5 boroughs of NYC and take in the sights and sounds of hip-hop's birthplace in this special show.” You can catch the rewind for that show here.
Drawing-wise, I’ve not done much, except an A3 charcoal + paper cut-out piece of Quincy Jones who recently passed away.
Last week I also picked up the spray cans after an eleven-year break (yikes), and traveled to an undisclosed derelict spot with fellow writer Rex, who was really the catalyst in getting me to do this. I have a love/hate relationship with graffiti in that I was obsessed for a good portion of my younger life, but never really got any good at it IMHO… and TBH, felt like I never really had a style of my own. I’ve spent the last thirty years working in the creative industry as a graphic designer and creative director, and my process and approach to most personal creative projects are influenced by that world… so once I agreed to go painting with Rex I found myself unsurprisingly struggling to find time to give it any thought, and then eventually overthinking what I was going to on the day.
The day in question was when that storm swept the country, and while it wasn’t bad enough to cancel the day, the walls in this place where soaking wet, making it impossible to roller any paint over what was there already. And TBH, spraying it wasn’t much easier… with no rags at hand to wipe it dow it was simply a case of doing the best with what I had. I didn’t want to walk away from it as the likelihood was it might be another eleven years before I was convinced to go painting again.
I’ve never been bothered about fill-ins… I honestly get bored by the time it comes to deciding what colours to use, my interest has always been letters and characters, so I opted for a limited palette of colours and a load of chrome, (I also didn’t want to spend much money on paint!)
As a fan of mid-century illustration, I was making a conscious decision to do some letters that fitted that aesthetic and I was intentionally aiming to be a bit scrappy with my outlining (like it would be if using pen and ink)… which was fine TBH as my can-control is pretty much non-existent.
Now, if I’d done this thirty years ago I would have ended-up having a hissy fit at the conditions, and throwing cans left, right and centre over the general shitness… but I’ve mellowed a lot over the years, and learned to embrace the things that go wrong… and I have to admit, I quite like the general drippyness of this as it reminds me of the sort of the work from Subway Art. I’m not claiming to be in the same ball park of those legends BTW, just the reality of the conditions leading to the work not being laboured over.
I know it’s a cardinal sin to only partially go over another writers work, but as mentioned I couldn’t mulsh due to the wet walls (it was just slipping off more than going on), and I’d used up all the spray… so it is what it is (and I did apologise on the wall… I’m not a monster after all).
Toodle-pip!
M / LG x