Rest and be thankful

Rest and be thankful

Maps have proved very useful over the years. Although I doubt this map will be guiding anyone anywhere again. Destiny has something entirely different in store for this particular map. She’s become art. Maybe we could look at it as a roadmap to peace.

Rock the casbah! Here we have ‘Rest and be thankful’. The title of which came and hit me like a rock to the head. It’s funny how your brain works sometimes. As i was glancing at the finished picture trying to think of a suitable title a picture of a friend’s house from childhood came to mind. That house was called ‘Rest and be thankful’. So there you have it. The workings of an artist’s mind.

Anyway, it’s a wraithlike lady with a childlike yet hopeful flower of peace. If that isn’t some kind of incisive commentary on world affairs then I don’t know what is.

It’s 48 x 60cm and is signed on reverse. Here is the ebay link

Cheers

id-iom

Streetlife

With the onset of better weather it seems getting out more is a whole load more feasible than it has been. So, what we had was a lovely spring day, a bag full of (mainly cardboard) pieces to put on the street and South London to work with… The pieces were largely mixed media – a mixture of screenprinting, painting, stencil, googly eyes and a little glitter. What could possibly go wrong?

Thankfully it all went swimmingly apart from our attempts to film it all. Expect some kind of results soon. Who knows, with a bit of clever editing it may not end up to be too bad. Only time will tell…

At least we managed to get some half decent photo’s. For bigger shots of any of the pieces please visit our Flickr page.

Cheers

id-iom

Cardboard city!

You learn something new every day don’t you? I realised when I used the title ‘cardboard city‘ for this post that it was a reference to an area where homeless people lived in cardboard boxes - but i never realised that it was a particular place (where the IMAX is now) just near Waterloo station in Central London where over 200 homeless people lived from 1983 to 1998. I used to work near there in about 2000 and there were a couple of people still sleeping in the underpasses but i can only imagine what it must have been like to live there in the mid 80′s…

Anyhoo, with summertime pretty much upon us it’s time once again to hit the streets in earnest. We’ve got plenty of bits and pieces to get up when the time is right and here is a sneak peek at some of the cardboard pieces that will be adorning London’s walls and doorways somewhere in the near future.

I’m not entirely sure why but i think my favourite one is ‘oh my god i’m flowering’ with ‘smile’ coming a close second. We also have some huge bits of cardboard which we will be placing out at the same time – just as soon as i can come up with suitable spots for them to be placed/affixed to.

Cheers

id-iom

Oh my god i’m flowering!

Smile

Taking the bull by the horns

Fat head

Give it a rest!

Pramcar

This is not the way it’s meant to be

I’m particular

A Fiery Soft Mess

I know, I know. It’s an odd title for both a blog post and a picture but there you have it. I’m not going to back down on this one…

What can i say about ‘A Fiery Soft Mess’? Well ‘A-mazing!’ and ‘Lovin it!’ are just two of the top-level superlatives already applied to this piece (albeit on our flickr page )  but if nothing else she is impressive in dimensions (over a metre tall/wide) although she is painted on a big piece of wood! What springs to mind when i say the words ‘A Fiery Soft Mess’? In fact don’t answer that and just enjoy the picture. In fact pointedly don’t answer the question of what springs to mind when i say ‘A Fiery Soft Mess’. At least we resisted the urge to colour her nipple in. I think i prefer it that way now although I was chief advocate of nipple painting at the time the issue was under question. It just goes to show that you do live and learn.

Keep tuned for the next week’s truism…

Cheers

id-iom

Title: A fiery soft mess

Media: Acrylic, spray paint and paint pen on wooden board

Size: 122 x 107 cm

When hummingbirds fall in love

We had already done a version of this for a client in New York who contacted us asking for another one as they’d had to give the last one away to pay for an emergency plumber! Apparently when the plumber came round he was smitten by the piece and kept looking at it and rather than ask for any money for sorting out the flooding issue he’d been called in for he asked if he could have the picture as payment. As the flooding was apparently quite severe (and he would have cost an absolute fortune) it was agreed to give him the framed version of this in payment for his services. A call was then put in to us as the piece was sorely missed and we were asked if we could come up with a replacement. A couple of weeks later and we now have the final product ready to ship out. If only all problems were so easily solved.

Anyway, who would have guessed that plumbers were interested in the love lives of hummingbirds?

Cheers

id-iom

 

Title: When Hummingbirds Fall in Love

Media: handcut stencils and spraypaint

Size: 100 x 40cm on thick watercolour paper

SOLD – Commission

Graffiti gardening

After coming across this dirty and unloved little area I thought it definitely needed a bit of brightening up. Maybe some more should be added?What do you reckon?

Cheers

id-iom

id-iom

Title: Urban flower

Media: Hand cut stencils & spraypaint

Pretty Boy! – Mimilove x id-iom – supercharged collaboration canvas!

We have just got our grubby mitts back on the collaboration piece we sent off to Mimilove a short while ago and it’s looking sweet! We started off with a nice new wallpaper stencil then added the face holding his eyes. Then it was carefully packaged up and sent off to Mimi for some further TLC. Then there was a nervous wait to see what she would pull out of the bag to sort it out. But not to worry she has embroidered it up and hit it with some budgerigars. Now who’s a pretty boy?

You can check out Mimi’s website here.

For sale – please let us know if you are interested.

Cheers

id-iom

Swapsies!

We have recently completed a swap deal with the lovely and very talented Mimilove. If you haven’t checked her stuff out before check her flickr here and her most amusing blog here. We didn’t give her much to go on for hers but she did her research and came up with this lovely piece which references a few of our favourite things, namely graffiti, the Isle of Man (where we are from) and Manx cats:

Keeping a general cat theme to the whole thing we then managed to come up with this by way of response. Apparently ‘An Army of Mimi’ has been well received so i’m calling that a good swap - everybody’s happy! The picture doesn’t really do justice to the glitter we put on the heart though: