SERENDIPITY #22 SPEED

By happy coincidence - serendipity! - (I will get tired of this, but not before you) the exhibition is on for 23 days and since there are 23 paintings, for the sheer hell of it I will be posting about a painting every day throughout . . . ​​​ SPEED  mixed media on canvas 92 x122cm.

On returning to painting as something that felt lost and finding it again to be an essential need, as a fulfilling creative release and to give succour to mid-level mental health blues (is that enough?) then figuring out wtf I actually wanted to do was surprisingly straightforward as my 'style' remained fairly unchanged. No shame in that, it was all very familiar but like any practice though it was all about getting proficient again. And, not retreating into well worn tropes, challenging my own conventions along the way, adding new values. Coming up to SPEED then - aaarrrgghhhhh - it may be easier to explain it  through oh, ffs numbers this is the 4th painting (Nailmouth, Easy 8, Barbara Allen are 123) I worked on and the 1st of the larger works as I felt the need to throw stretch my arms, spread out and literally throw some paint around - which may  sound like your trad tortured artist -but it was far from that. Top left, 50 mph and age at the time, 100 percent focus on the work, Looking at You - MC5 on 45RPM eating motor speed - 5 stars. Clear as mud m'lud. Central to this painting,  and the object of desire is the gorgeous happy girl with strands of Botticelliesque gold in her blonde hair, above the beauty, the beast masked man growling & grumbling alongside a stencilled repeat of smokin' Irma La Douce. Splayed right across the canvas is a Pollockesque action painted Speed stencil in red and pink gloss paint - symbolising, ahem,  the alacrity of imagery. And  in the lower right quarter a three-colour stencil of Andrea del Sarto's 500 year-old Portrait of a Sculptor/Young Man  looking at her and her long hair and realised all that all he wanted to do was . . .