Due to popular demand* my wang-eyed pop folk art paintings will be showing for another month at Blackstock Road’s famous** Cinnamon 2 gallery***. Included in this mini-exhibition are paintings of German footballers, dead flowers, old men, know-it-all deities and people I’ve bumped into on the tube.

* ie. They haven’t forced me at gunpoint to take it all down.

** Actually, not famous.

*** Well OK it’s more of a cafe with big walls.

I’ve been thinking for a while now (say, about 12 years) how best to proceed with my Irrational Portrait Gallery project. This grew from a visit I made to an exhibition called Egyptian Funeral Portraits at the British Museum in 1997. The pictures on display were similar to the slightly bug-eyed images I’d been producing since my sojourn in Venezuela in the early 90s, which in turn had been influenced by South American folk art. These subsequently went through a West of Ireland Folk Art Filter plus a few shavings of inspiration from African barber shop signs and my ongoing preoccupation with orthodox icons and the world of mystic gold. These disparate art traditions had various things in common, one of which was a decidedly non-academic approach to portrait painting. Another was vivid colour as if painted while under the influence of poteen/aguardiente/whatever it was that Egyptian artists from 1st century AD drank. There was more life in those ancient portraits of dead people than many of the people currently walking and stalking the grey streets of London.

For many years I have had a plan to start producing pictures of footballers in the icon tradition. They are, after all, the sort of people we worship nowadays. At the time I was obsessed with doing a painting of Roy Keane. This was while he was at the height of his playing powers – late 1990s. I never did the painting. It might work now, but only as a retrospective piece. However, I have at last got myself organised enough to bring out a selection of prints of my favourite footballers, using both acrylic knife/finger/brush painting and digital wang-eyed scratchy illustration. The first batch are Rivelino, George Best, Diego Maradona and Peter Lorimer. Some of the players to come will be more obscure, because they are personal favourites.

I decided it was time to start putting more time into this art blog so I signed up for the 4-week Blog Triage class with Cynthia Morris and Alyson Stanfield. Today’s assignment is to describe the people I want to
visit and read my blog.

• Are they of a certain age or background? – Slightly mixed: Northern Labour MPs, football fans, 60-something British actresses, Guinness-drinking Brazilians, 35-45 year old Irish women, rural-based artists, socialist romantics, Highbury Mums, Stoke Newington dads.
• Do they live in a particular region? – Ah, yes, jumped the gun a bit on that one. North London, East Midlands, South East, Ireland, USA, Brazil.
• What are their interests—including, but not limited to art? – Creating a more just society, drinking and dancing, surfing, driving in Portugal, singing folk songs, growing fruit trees, watching their old films on DVD, talking about football, politics and music in pubs.
• Are they comfortable with the blog format? – You know, I reckon many of them are now addicted to the Facebook/Twitter combination
• Are they likely to comment? – Yes, if I playfully insult any of them in some way.

Why does your Diego Maradona print look a bit like a young Glenda Jackson?
There are two reasons: 1) Firstly, there is a thread of beauty in both the 1978 Diego and the 1968 Glenda. If I love Glenda for her powerful attractiveness, why not reference her in my portrait of Diego? 2) My operation for a detached retina a few years ago saved the sight in my left eye but it has left me seeing the world in a different way.

Just been with the kids to the PICASSO: The Mediterranean Years (1945-1962) exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery. 11 year old mesmerised by picture ‘Francoise’ and sat on bus on the way home drawing versions of it . 7 year old just wanted to touch everything and climb on the sculptures, though he did like “the picture of the drowning bloke”. 4 year old thought most of the paintings were of mummy.