The Stripes series probably wasn’t really thought of as a series of paintings back at the start of it all, it was just an untitled painting, subtitled Stripes, and then there was a second one and a then a third and there is a pleasure in just painting stripes, enjoying the paint, the pleasure of colour, the process, the movement of a loaded brush. And then somewhere around 2020 one of those Stripes paintings went red, white and blue, probably something to do with the frustration in terms of watching what was going on with the so called leader of the free world, that and pop art and the everything the Stars and Stripes means in terms of pop art and the world order and for someone who was born in the 60s, landing on the moon and what the hell can I do over here in my East London bunker? Painting while watching American politics and marches on Washington and the trials and the relief more than the hope of Biden’s win in late 2020 and the horror that isn’t so much the horror of Trump and the things he says as it is Trump’s followers and the unbelievably insane things they say, their blind devotion as he so obviously manipulates and then laughs at them and just doesn’t go away. All we can do from over here is watch, squirm. The flag is a strong image, a pop art thing, the rock ‘n roll dream, Hendrix at Woodstock, the MC5, the New York Dolls (or were they more hammer and sickle?). And then he was found guilty and then he was shot and still all we can do over here is watch and then they voted him in again…

And of course I’m a painter, not an accountant, don’t expect me to keep a track of the numbers, here I am in the Summer of 2024 thinking I should put all these Stripes paintings on one page and yes there are two number 26s and a couple of images seem to have gone astray, they must be around here somewhere…

As always, do please click on an image to enlarge and see the whole thing or to run the slide show…