Contemplation time

Now this is a bit of a weird one for us. We usually like to stick some pithy words or a face on any pictures we do, don’t ask me why, we just do it would seem. This is why this piece remains something of a mystery.I was in the studio making what I thought would be a spiffy background for us to work on when the other half of id-iom comes in and says he likes it as is. That was enough to make me stop and ponder what he was talking about. This contemplation sadly went on for about 6 months longer than expected…

I was looking for some gold leaf when I came across this canvas again and, would you Adam & Eve it, I suddenly beheld what the other half of id-iom had seen all that time ago. So, before we potentially do anything else with it we thought it probably deserved to see the light of day.

Cheers

id-iom

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Psychology of colour

This morning i just couldn’t think of anything clever or amusing for the write up for this piece, so whilst racking my brain I thought i’d have a quick trawl of the interweb to see if i could find any inspiration. It wasn’t looking great until I came across an article about google’s new poetry AI and that’s when things started to fall into place. So instead of some well thought out prose I give you some poetry created by a computer after a little nudge in the right direction by myself. I hope you enjoy:

Psychology of Pink

First I fell into an idle bed;

Drowning all a feeling with a think

To breathe those flowers upon my head.

Psychology of blue

He knew that an artist, an marked school,

Brought on its heart, like the distant dew

As if a dog I might paint a fool?

Now if that doesn’t strike a chord i’m pretty sure you are dead inside…

Cheers

id-iom

Staring into the void

As Patricia stood staring into the abyss that was her life all she could think about was the good times when there were things to be thankful for, when there was colour in her life. Sadly those times are no more as she recently got diagnosed with complete colour blindness after watching too much Piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain. Now she sees the world in greyscale. Not just that but she also has cataracts which is making her eyesight blurry.

Nowadays Patricia just sits trying to remember the kaleidoscope of colours that once permeated her vision but to no avail. Sometimes she feels like her vision is improving and that she can see the blue in the sky but she now realises that this is just a precursor to a migraine that she will invariably have for a day or two.

Due to this Patricia is now considering a career as an art critic because she feels she’s bitter enough thanks to her incredibly poor eyesight which she feels will serve her well in this new profession. She asked if she could have a look at the picture once I was done. I won’t be doing that again…

Cheers

id-iom

Captain Cadmium

Now i’m not really sure how you can be a captain of a pigment but then again I’m not entirely sure what’s going with the world nowadays, so I suppose I have to expect any and everything goes in this social media age.

In fact just looking through this guy’s social media feed it would seem he’s no captain at all but just someone who has a unhealthy fascination with cadmium in all forms. That said he seems to be more interested in the colours it can make instead of its use in mobile phone batteries.

He tried to get in to the game of mining cadmium but instead of trying the tried and tested techniques he decided that he would try and obtain as much as he could by smoking as much as he could. Now as we all know this is an incredibly dangerous idea but the captain is now the biggest and only dealer in cigarette obtained cadmium. I have to say i really don’t think this is a good business model at all but c’est la vie i suppose…

Cheers

Id-iom

The average colour of the universe

In 2001, Karl Glazebrook and Ivan Baldry determined that the average colour of the unirvers was a greenish white. It came to light just a year later that they corrected their own flawed analysis and reported that their survey of the light from over 200,000 galaxies averaged to a slightly beigeish white.

It turns out that wasn’t even the focus of their studies but I guess sometimes you learn what life throws your way. Now, quite what that means for us I’m not quite sure. It’s actually been called ‘cosmic latte’ which sounds better than beige. Saying that I had to work with ‘sahara beige’ as that was the closest colour match I could find. So there you have it.

Created on A2 paper using the magic of spraypaint, stencils and imagination. Drop us a line if you’d like to give this bad boy a new home…

Love

id-iom

Scarlett

Coming up with a child’s name can be a tricky business. You’ve got to get it right as they’re stuck with it for life. John had been struggling with this process for months whilst his wife insisted, increasingly loudly, that he better come up with something really good if he’s taking this long. One popular method for naming babies in celebrity circles is the ‘Name child after where it was conceived’ method which is really quite self explanatory so John thought he’d head down this path.

After performing the necessary mental arithmetic and referring to the calendar on his phone John worked out it had probably been whilst they had been on a short break to the Isle of Man. There was a particular afternoon picnic which he thinks may have been the culprit. It all escalated a little quickly and could probably have got them arrested but was fun nonetheless.

He was still remininscing when a nurse popped her head into the waiting area and told him to get straight to the delivery room. As he entered the room his daughter was just making an appearance and the name he was searching for jumped straight into his head. ‘Scarlett!’ he shouted. It was lucky she turned out to have red hair…

Cheers

id-iom

Of every stripe

Sometimes I really not sure if i believe wikipedia. I was looking for some inspiration for this here write up and looked up ‘stripes’. According to Wikipedia ‘stripes on clothing first appeared in the Medieval times. During that era, only prisoners, criminals, clowns, prostitutes, hangmen, etc. were seen wearing a black and white stripped garment.’ This paragraph is then finished with ‘During the 60s and 70s, more and more people started to wear striped shirts as the garment was seen as a symbol of rebellion.’ Now I’m no scholar on stripes but that all sounds like a load of balderdash to me.

Anyway, I digress, today’s sphere is examining some microscopic stripes that are barely visible to the human eye. I’ve magnified the picture enough so it’s all clearly visible. Why she’s examining the microscopic stripes is anyone’s guess. She’s on A2 and has been made using the magic of stripes, stencils, spraypaint and imagination. Drop us a line if interested…

Cheers

id-iom

Our Lady of the Decoration (id-iom @ Cheltenham Paint Festival)

For the inaugural Cheltenham Paint Festival we packed up the the id-iomobile and set off with high hopes. The weather for Saturday wasn’t meant to be very good and, for once, the weatherman was bang on the money. It stared off sunny but before long had descended into a maelstrom of wind and rain. Despite battling the somewhat inclement conditions we somehow managed to pull off ‘Our Lady of the Decoration’ before a very vigorous 6pm downpour. We’d had to dry the canvas half a dozen times but working outdoors in the UK in ‘summer’ time can be like that sometimes.

As we were painting just next to the Arts building at the University of Gloucestershire’s Hardwick Campus we thought we’d best try to come up with something classy but colourful and so went with our depiction of the three Muses or ‘Our Lady of the Decoration’ as we’ve decided to call it. The Muses are Aoide (song), Melete (practice) and Mneme (memory). If that doesn’t inspire the arts students then I don’t know what will. The white chevrons have been borrowed from the Uni’s logo so hopefully they’ll be down with it too.

A big thanks to Andy and all the rest of the crew who helped organise. A winning weekend to be sure.

Cheers

id-iom

No Colour Above Plimsoll Line

Cats are definitely one of my favourite creatures. We currently have a cat that actually lives next door but spends about 90% of it’s time with us. We don’t feed it (well, a couple of bits of ham every now and then) but it still waits outside our door or sits mewing on the balcony until it’s let in. We even get a Christmas card from the people next door which is co-signed by the cat! You wouldn’t really put up with that if your dog was always going next door now would you? But cats can just get away with it.

Anyway, our newest print features a cat with some kind of rainbow-vision, a plimsoll line and a tiny version of us! It is actually a combination of two previous large scale pieces we had done. The first was our piece done at Upfest 2010 (featuring the ‘working’ CCTV camera in the top left) and the second was done on a friend’s wall. The prints also feature our little ‘id-iom’ stencil that has been applied on each print just like on the UPfest piece.

Cheers

id-iom

Title: No Colour Above Plimsoll Line

Media: Screenprint, spraypaint and hand cut stencils

Size: A3

£70 each

Facing East

As with most of our pictures i would have a hard time explaining how or why they come into being.

Well, what can i tell you about this little number? It is a diptych, it is an experiment in colour (or lack of) and it is based on a picture of a Chinese girl. Beyond that it’s difficult to say. Perhaps I was listening to ‘Go West’ by the Pet Shop Boys and decided unconsciously to create a picture that was the antithesis of their lyrics. Perhaps I thought the girl in the original picture was mystifying and enigmatic and just needed to paint her. Perhaps I just wanted to get the paints out and get messy. Who could possibly say? Not me. Anyway, i’m just rambling on again – so it’s best I leave now and you can make up your own mind about the picture…

Right, what’s next?

Cheers

id-iom

id-iom

Title: Facing East (Monochrome)

Media: Acylic, ink, oil pastel, spraypaint, charcoal and paint pen

Size: A2

id-iom

Title: Facing East (Polychrome)

Media: Acylic, ink, oil pastel, spraypaint, charcoal and paint pen

Size: A2