Hello, now the new website is up and running
Misterrob.co.uk and the blog showcasing new stuff should be starting up on a regular basis,(I've just done the maddest starriest papercut ever -
New Stuff Blog)
this blog is going to be as promised a bit more diverse.
I thought I might share with you some of the pictures that I own and have hanging on my wall at home. Pictures that I look at everyday and give me joy and fill me with inspiration.
This picture is by the American artist Maira Kalman. It is included in her brilliant book 'The Principles of Uncertainty'. She is fairly unknown in England but I discovered her many years ago in the old Zwemmer graphic design bookshop inn Charing X Rd where they stocked her childrens books with beguiling magical titles like "Hey Willie, see the pyramids", "Swami on Rye" and my favourite "Chicken, Soup, boots". These incredible books I always felt were my own little secret. I find it hard to say how great I think she is - THE WOMAN IS A GENIUS OF KINDNESS AND EVERYTHING ELSE.
This picture of a man and woman walking in the rain is I believe set in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris. When I was a student I did a 3 month exchange to an art school which was situated just across from this beautiful park and I walked through it on my own all the time. Living alone in a city where you can't speak the language and have no friends is a pretty solitary existence but I was always happy and can't remember a single sad day.
Last year I was in Paris for a couple of days with my wife and we had a nice morning in the gardens just strolling around, we sat down and watched people play tennis (being unsporty myself I enjoy, with an air of bemusement watching people throw themselves around needlessly), we watched children play with nice old sailing boats on the big round pond (not unlike the one in Central Park!) which you could hire from a punky looking boy sitting by his shed, and then it began to rain a little and we sheltered together under an umbrella not unlike the couple in this painting, contented and still in love.
The Lomo Camera people sent me this Lomo 'Diana' to customise. It had a bit of a bobbly textured surface that didnt encourage things to be stuck to it so me and the most excellent and lovely Noortje (on extended loan to me from the Eindhoven Design Academy) made little paper stencils and colored it with spray paint.
Recipe for Disaster......Having a sort out through a load of old stuff this weekend my wife found this collection of rambling drivel in one of her old recipe books. It was written 19 years ago when I was out of college a few years and by the look of things I was having a bit of soul searching about what this whole 'art' thing was about.I had a young family and was worried about money (and the lack of it)and our future prospects (and the lack of them) It's funny but I guess I would say the same sort of thing now !
Following on in the shortest series on the planet of picture I own and love, this is another Ardizzone illustration, it is the last picture in Eleanor Estes book 'Pinkie Pye'. It reminds me of the end of a perfect summer day sitting on a little balcony enjoying warm cool of evening. I dont have a porch but one day... one day...
Spring is coming I'm sure, on summer afternoons in the studio I have to pull the blinds down on some of the windows because the sun shines too brightly onto the big desk, recently I've been balancing a few paper and lazercut thingies on the window frames and was surprised at how nice they looked as shadows when for the first time in 2010 the blinds came down in the daytime !
I work everyday at this big desk and I thought it might be a good idea to send my trust assistant Hazel up a very high step ladder to take a snap of the entire thing from above. It's not as exciting an image I thought it might be but it was a pretty impressive angle to show off my Krusty the Clown hair do in all it's bald and awful glory !!
I am a bit in love with the town of Rye in Sussex, so when I was invited by a magazine to create a poster a la homage to the beautiful posters advertising seaside towns produced by British Railway Companies in the 30s, 40s and 50s Rye was always going to be my town of choice ! This is almost finished. I cut my papercuts out of the same paper and spray color it afterwards ....
This funny little drawing hangs in my living room, it doesn't have a title and is one of many thousands of pencil studies Stanley Spencer must have made in his incredibly productive life. Lots of people see the womans figure as an owl ! The fact that she is headless and armless doesn't help though I'm sure would have been of interest to Freud ! The clinging boy seems to be naked and dressed at the same time ! Hmm.
This small pen and ink drawing by the italian sounding english illustrator Edward Ardizzone hangs on the wall to the left of the TV at home and I often find my gaze being drawn away from the box to this little picture.
Misterrob is now , I believe the term is - 'LIVE'.
Well,we were all well and truly turned on at Ryantown last wednesday, we worked all afternoon to get this festive papercut finished in time for the first late Wednesday opening. It is a paper cut sitting in front of 2 sheets of electroluminous paper (that's paper you plug in and it lights up to you and me !!!)
