Neglect seems to be the main word in terms of this blog website whatever it be called thing, to write or to paint? No contest really, and things have been rather busy over the last few months, you can’t really expect me to find time to write as well can you? Painting takes over, people are neglected, families wonder if you are still alive, friends send out search parties, ribbons fall off, painting and curating and running a gallery and making last minute dashes to Chrome and Black for more supplies take up all the time, never mind eating or paying the phone bill, need that fresh can of Shock Red Montana Gold. Well times are always busy, but the last couple of months have been even more frantically busy than usual. The Vinyl show at Cultivate, the fight for the Mydog Sighs cans at the Three x Three show that Emma and I curated (Lewis Banister, AKA Copymenot, and Gareth Morgan, the other two elements of our fourth Three x Three show didn’t too badly either), the last minute invite to take Cultivate to

the rather prestigious annual Brick Lane Art Car Boot Fair where we shared space with all kinds of interesting people, painting on old desk tops found in the street for the Numbers show (and gathering all that together as well), painting live in the summer rain at the Apple Cart festival, just down the East London road in Victoria Park (spray paint does wonderful things in warm wet summer rain), the very successful Bodies show at Cultivate that was quickly followed by the

very busy Little Summer Benefits show and then my own Layers, Collaborations, Depositions solo show with the art depository in the corner of the gallery and well there really has been no time to write about it all, or put the photos up. The current Deep Purple group show at Cultivate has just opened, we’re in the first weekend of that one right now, the First Thursday opening seemed busier than ever, Purple is our thirty-fifth show in the space since we opened back at the start of September last year, there really is no time to write and blog, there’s hardly time to paint. No, no time to write about all these things, we’re too busy doing them…

You’ll find a million and one photos of all these events via the photo albums on the Cultivate Facebook page… I will catch up with all the words soon, the Art Car Boot fair was great fun, the Apple Cart was an adventure and the shows at Cultivate have been really flowing… This big red canvas here was one I painted a new layer on in the run up to the Art Depository show. I have been painting layers of leaves and such on this canvas since it was first rescued, complete with scorch marks from the bonfire it was just about to go on, back at the end of 2010. In fact I entered 2011 painting that previously yellow eight foot tall canvas with a layer of green leaves while a New Years Eve party raged in the studio next door and I listened to Crass very loudly in here while party people watched and talked (I do like to enter a new year with paint brush in hand, this year it was the threesome of black paintings that took me in to 2012 while next door another new years party raged and more drunk people watched on . The now big red piece has been unfinished in my studio ever since that party a year and a half ago, well some might have said it was finished with the big spine of green leaves spiraling down it but for me it never was in any kind of finished state. The Sunday before my solo depository show opened, I took the then big green leaf-covered canvas, alongside a found half-full pot of red emulsion paint, down to the gallery and worked on it outside on the pavement while I looked after the final days of the Little Summer Benefits show. The new set of big bold black leaves grew on it as the red paint was poured and then scraped back off. Meanwhile the other photo, the big black and blue canvas, that is now featuring in the current Deep Purple show, was completed on the last day of the Depository show, it was left outside on the Saturday afternoon and then painted on on the Sunday and Monday outside the gallery. Do really need to write properly about the Depository and all the reactions while it all still fresh in my head, that and the adventures with the Art Car Boot Fair and such, for now this is just a 1.00am Sunday morning catch up, a brief few words and some photos of recent events… Sleep is needed, another busy day awaits tomorrow..