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).
Time catches up with us all. This old skull has been feeding the flowers for so long that it’s difficult to know where the flowers end and the skull begins. The skull doesn’t even remember it’s name anymore; it’s been there for so many years. But all is as it should be. The circle of life turns slowly but it does forever turn…
Perhaps weirdly this is all based on a canvas that had been in development hell for a couple of months until eventually we put up as it was and that somehow opened the floodgates so we created an enhanced batch on supersmooth A2 paper featuring a background colour blend, extra bonus flowers, some gold leaf and spiffy rounded edges. Let us know if you need one for your wall…
Well will you look at that, did you know that the colour pink was named after the flower ‘pink’ or, to give it its proper name, Dianthus plumarius? Every day is a learning day. Rose here used to think they named roses after her. She’s just learned it was the other way round. Her mind is blown…
She’s A4 in size and made using acrylic, paint pen and watercolour. Drop us a line if you’d like her to brighten your wall. Then we can enter into negotiations. It’s how we do things round here.
Things are weird. So we’ve decided to get a little weirder too. Here we have Mabel and Neil on their third date. Things seem to be going swimmingly thank you very much. They are, obviously, buttercups but they had taken a wrong turn at some point during their promenade and now find themselves in a part of the garden they don’t know so well. The blue Himalayan poppies seem larger than Neil remembers and they seem to be looming awfully close too. How on earth does Neil extricate himself and Mabel from this potentially sticky situation with his honour intact? Well, frankly, that’s what your imagination is for. So just make up the rest yourself.
It is A2 in size and made using the magic of imagination, acrylic, spray paint and gouache.
Did you know that the human skull is comprised of 22 bones that fit together like a jigsaw puzzle? Every day is a school day. This skull however is made up of little flowers. How cute. Given that my favourite part of the Hop-Tu-Naa/Halloween related artwork we put up on Monday was the skull we used for the background I thought it deserved a second outing where it could feature a little more prominently. Plus, today is the Day of the Dead so it’s quite fitting. Here it is looking resplendent on some A3 paper I marbled then scrawled on. The dymo text reads ‘The skull flowers but once a year’. So there you have it.
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
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.
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.
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.
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