Sandra was a decidedly modern woman. She knew exactly what she wanted in life and the best way to get it. She had started her makeup brand at age 18 and, over the next 7years, had parlayed that into The House of Ill Repute – a lifestyle brand that encompassed fashion, homewares, hotels, bars and plenty else in between.
Now she’s appearing on the cover of Vogue with the tagline ‘A Lady of Ill Repute’. The haters are gonna love that. But you can probably imagine what she thinks of them…
A Lady of Ill Repute is on classy A2 paper and has been made using the magic of acrylic, spraypaint, paint pen, charcoal, watercolour and imagination. She’s available to a good home so drop us a line or she’ll be on our new website soon – www.id-iom.com (link in bio).
If you’ve never heard of the Four Sevens (or ‘Cuatro Siete’ to give them their original, although now lesser used, name) then it’s probably better you keep it that way. The Four Sevens are an exclusively female gang of high end cat burglars. If an original Warhol has mysteriously disappeared from a penthouse apartment then you probably know where to start looking. Although you won’t find anything, obviously. Because they’re exceptionally good at what they do.
Their mere existence can only be inferred rather than known for sure. If you know the right people in the wrong circles then you’ll hear talk of all manner of daring escapades carried out in the most challenging of circumstances.
You might begin to wonder how we know such things. Unfortunately, that’s not for me to say. ‘Four Sevens’ is on A4 and made using hot foil printing, acrylic and paint pen. Drop us a line if you need it in your life. If they hear you’ve got it though it may not last for long…
Once, when Sarah was a small girl being tucked into bed, she got the strange notion that the sun wasn’t going to rise the next morning. She tried to explain her thoughts to her father but he waved her concerns away and wished her a good night. Sarah didn’t sleep a single wink that night and while it was still dark she crept out of bed and down into the garden.
She waited for what felt like an eternity in the cold and dark willing the sun to come up. Eventually the first rays of sunlight heralded the arrival of dawn and, a short while thereafter, the sun’s warm embrace. Once the sun was fully up she crept back to bed with a jubilant smile on her face. To this day she still occasionally gets that same notion that the sun won’t rise so she’ll stay up all night to ensure it’s arrival and she can once again feel the sun’s warm embrace.
‘The sun’s warm embrace’ is painted on A2 paper and has been made using acrylic, paint pen and charcoal. She’ll be available from our online shop or you can message us directly.
You’ve probably never heard of Whyte Investigations. And that’s just the way P.I. Helen Whyte likes it. She would definitely prefer you to keep her name out of your mouth. Not because she’s liable to slap you for it but because if too many people require her services then it’s a sure fire indicator there’s a serious paranormal event incoming. And that can be problematic.
The fact she’s the best paranormal investigator in the UK (possibly the World) could be down to the fact that she’s equal parts Columbo and Sam Spade or it could be down to the posse of crows that follow her everywhere and are her eyes and ears as she investigates whatever dodgy activity is going down.
‘It’ll be alwhyte’ is A3 in size and made using paint pen, acrylic, charcoal and a one colour screen print. It’s available in our shop or you can always get in touch directly.
Ladies and Gentlemen. May I present to you our newest debutante, Lady Samara Linoleum. A most mysterious lady indeed. We’ve given you a quick glimpse of this majestic A2 lino cut before she was inked up but we can now reveal her in all her majesty. I absolutely love how she’s come out complete with glitchy printing. Once you get a bit of hand finishing on there we’ve got a glorious little edition of four.
Lady Samara is on A2 Bockingford paper and made using the magic of hand cut lino print, ink, paint pen, watercolour, spray paint and imagination. If you need the esteemed Lady Linoleum for your wall then you can find them in our shop or slide into our DM’s…
As a small aside, we’ve run out of ink so can’t currently do anymore at the minute but that does mean it’s Art Shop Time! Yay! Once we’ve treated ourselves to one of the best places in London we may do a run of just the print without any hand embellishing. But that remains to be seen.
Maggie has been trying to forget herself for a few years now but, unfortunately for her, she has a mind like a steel trap which just won’t let her forget. She managed to get the three barmen at her local to forget her almost instantly, her cat Echo acted like she never knew who she was anyway and her parents had been largely ignoring her since her 21st birthday anyway.But she remembered.
The reason behind Maggie’s interest in forgetting herself comes down to her misguided attempt to woo her coworker Steve. It was all quite the drawn out farce with Steve not knowing who she was at all due to the fact that they had only ever talked in the office via post it notes on the fridge in the kitchen. To say she never lived it down would be an understatement. Steve left less than three months later but she still finds suggestive post it notes on the fridge from time to time…
On 33 x 22 cm.bockingford paper and made using watercolour pencil, acrylic and charcoal. Available from our big cartel.
For our next foray into lino we’ve decided to go big. Now I have to admit I’m not really one to cut stencils and usually leave that up to the other half of id-iom but recently whilst tidying up in the studio I found an unopened package. It turns out it was some A2 size bits of lino. This was perfect as we’d just done some small lino cuts a couple of weeks ago.
Unlike cutting stencils I have managed to smash this one out without a single complaint about my sore fingers. Saying all that it does take a while though and am not quite finished yet. How we go about making the actual print at that size is currently still a mystery. When it’s all done you’ll be the first to know…
Out of all the pieces of canvas we found this was the most complete with a somewhat creepy face that the other half of id-iom just did not like. After a few minutes of discussion on what we were going to do we decided we were going to go abstract although we had no concrete plans on how we were going to go about achieving this.
We find the easiest way to proceed when you have no plan is to just start and see where it takes you. This can lead to some unfortunate circumstances however…
On the journey to abstraction we had to start somewhere so our first idea was to turn the piece into a half man, half pineapple kind of thing. Luckily this idea didn’t hang around too long before the other half of id-iom decided to become a bit of a can killer and pierce any almost-empty cans we had hanging around the studio.
Whilst, it was fun we had clearly gone too far by this point. So we gave into the inevitable and went back to rescuing some of the face. With a little finesse and a whole lot of luck we set about trying to pull this canvas back from the brink. A square stencil here or there, pulling the face forward and pushing the abstracted area into the background I give you ‘I see faces. Even when trying not to’.
Gary was just like you and me until the day he accidentally wandered through a field of genetically modified flowers and became ‘Nosegay’ with the ability to grow the most amazing alien-looking bouquets of flowers right from his fingertips. Now, whilst this wasn’t very helpful when it came to fighting supervillains it did give him a certain celebrity appeal. Which he revelled in. His client list was quite something to behold.
Despite this, his newfound wealth, and his access to jaw droppingly beautiful women he had repeatedly failed to impress any of them into going on a date with him. He imagined it was because he was ‘vertically challenged’ but in reality it was because he was arrogant and boring. Sadly he’d never have the insight to realise it…
This piece is based on an old sketch and is on a big bit of reclaimed canvas that was originally about 5 metres wide but had to be cut down into a slightly more manageable size. Which wasn’t really manageable at all. It’s now been rolled up so long that it’s no longer really viable as an actual canvas. Why I did it so large in the first place I’m not quite sure.
Perhaps I’ll go and grab a smaller canvas and paint it again. That would mean that I have to take myself to the art shop though which is never an action to take lightly as who knows what I’ll come back with.
When I originally found this map of Doncaster in a big box of assorted maps underneath my desk I thought ‘This is perfect’, I know a few people from Donny so I’m sure I can come up with something smart and urbane. Then, of course, inspiration deserted me and left me staring at a map of Yorkshire with no grand plan in sight.
After staring at the map for what could have been a week I decided to get in touch with someone from Donny to try and help me find a little inspiration. They gave me the following to work with:
1. Jeremy Clarkson – his mother had the Paddington bear factory
2. Kevin Keegan
3. Lesley Garrett
4. John Parr who did St Elmo’s fire tune, actually comes to our local pub
Very hard Hugo we are just a little mining town up North
And that was enough to get me on my way. First I thought I’d try the route of the Paddington Bear factory but sadly couldn’t come up with anything good enough, so moved on to number two but football is lost on me so I decided to move on to number three which didn’t really give me anything to work with either. This meant I had to try and come up with something using number four and I truly thought this would be the one. Who doesn’t like a catchy 80’s hit for inspiration? Again, however, I came up empty. I was just about to lose all hope of finding inspiration until I read the last line back to myself again and there it was…Just a little mining town up North.
thisisidiom.wordpress.com 
You must be logged in to post a comment.