The Rokeby Venus's Arse

Just one day to go before this weekend's Garden Party show at the PITT Project Space. here are a few words about what I've been up to. 

The Nu School of Contemporary Landscape Painting (NuCON) draws inspiration from the Microsoft screensaver depicting a somewhat nondescript hill, possibly somewhere in the United State of America.

For some kids, hardwired into online status recognition, their head in the cloud in some inner city urban ghetto this might be the first hill they ever see; Mount Para for the digital age, the meeting point where nature impinges on a virtual world. For the older, casual browser however, this green unpleasant mound might have become the point at which, the laptop having pinged into life they are forced into a decision, to choose between googling leisure wear and/or an evening browsing t&a through dead eyes, glass of Merlot in one hand, unresponsive mouse in the other.

This is a conventionally sexual hill, a gently undulating yet threateningly tilting tit or belly, the latest in a line that links the Rokeby Venus’s arse, Courbet’s Origin of the World and Andrew Wyeth’s Christine’s World, minus house, barn and girl. It might even be called Depilation Valley, shorn as it is of trees, shrubs, not a bush in sight. Nothing to spoil the view: everything revealed, all concealed.

We wonder what is the other side of it, what lurks just out of sight to the right, over the brow of the hill, those hills in the distance, menacing, inviting. Silent.

How did this seemingly ordinary image become arguably the most recognisable landscape in the world; more famous than a Constable hedgerow, Turner Wheat field or Stubbs’ pony, in leafy arbours languidly resting?

No Pain, No Gainsboro.

Time goes by, what are we, day eight or thereabouts and here I am, once more back in the lions den, the pit of despair, the PITT of hope in the Land of Hope and Crosby. It has been a while since I have picked up a paintbrush in anything approaching anger, mind you, the Worcester Open getting in the way for two weeks didn’t help. The studio was a bit of a mess but have had a tidy and thrown the doors wide open to let some fresh air into the place.

Playboy Bounty Bunny Hunter (+ mess) 

The big news is that I have bought two more canvases, one medium sized and one smaller sized. And talking of sizing, that is what I have done, applying a nice coat of glue evenly on the back and whilst the larger one still has a bit of muffin top the smaller is as tight as a drum.

I am continuing with the English Landscape painting theme as previously mentioned and am using the Microsoft screensaver image as the basis for my Bunny paintings. Microsoft’s image must surely be the most recognizable landscape in Britain, if not the world, replacing Constable’s Haywain at the top of the naturist’s chart.

I am not a naturist but anyone can recognize how exposed one would be on this landscape, the Hatywain offers far more protection from the elements and also cover from unintentional prying eyes.