A new website and blog!

I’ve had websites and blogs before but I felt a new start was in order for both. My previous website was stale; it didn’t feature my more recent work (which has taken a distinct turn for the weird), and it was using out of date technologies which not only exposed security issues but even actually cost me extra hosting money to retain. I was, in effect, paying to be a soft target.

In terms of the website, well it was another of those things that seemed much bigger in my head than in reality. The hardest part was selecting the pieces I wanted to showcase here – this isn’t even close to a history of my work – it’s just some example pieces, some which are particularly personal or special to me, and some which have always gone down well with others. The portfolio covers the three main types of work I do – landscape, abstract, and drawing. The fact that these quite clearly blur made me consider just lumping everything together but I decided to keep the categories. In my head a piece is always one of those three, even if it ends up wandering into the others.

Having not written anything blog-like for a long time, I wanted to take a different approach. A bit less “stream of consciousness” and a bit more “something I actually want to write about and share”. Make it a bit more conscious and deliberate and less social-media-y. The internet has enough random wibblings already, not least from me, so for that reason I’ve decided not to import my blog history. I’d say it’s lost forever, but nothing on the internet is truly lost. Instead I’ll be posting on a variety of art-adjacent topics. For example I’ve recently read Aime McNee’s excellent book “The World Needs Your Art”, which got me thinking about Stuff so I may share thoughts she’s stirred here; I’ve also chosen not to add narrative to the pieces in the portfolio, so I may decide to say a thing or two about a particular piece here. I might share some sketches or doodles or works in progress. Let’s see how it goes.

So I hope there’ll be something here you find interesting, amusing, or even violent-rage inducing. All responses accepted and valid.