-
Joe Strummer loved Jawlensky..and so do I...this is a copy of his 1912 self portrait which he painted on cardboard, when he was mates with Matisse and Kandinsky and joined the Neue Kunstlervereinigung Munchen before ho got booted out of Germany in 1914 ( he was Russian) and banned by The Nazis in 1933 -
I love painting on cardboard....I always thought Joe Strummer dreamed it up as a punk thing...but it's been a popular material for artists since it's invention....this is my first acrylic -
Joe Strummer taught me to skin up...I met him in London at a Free Concert in the summer of 73.....we became good friends....he spied on the hard right....lots of Nazis in London in the 70's ....we started Rock Against Racism....this is how I remember Joe before the Clash...baby faced -
Prints of Poppies at Argenteuil were everywhere in the early 70's...my first girlfriends' parents had one on the living room wall of their council house in Chester...I loved it but she thought it was kitsch...In retrospect I think it was popular because it's so beautiful and evocative...it always makes me feel free and I felt free here...painting my first water colour for 47 years! They had a Chinese Girl by Tretchikoff too and she was even more ashamed of that..I wander where she is now...I also love Monet for his courageous stand in the Dreyfus Affair...at a time when antisemitism is on the rise we need to remember when artists took stands https://www.jewishpress.com/sections/features/features-on-jewish-world/monet-dreyfus-and-the-end-of-impressionism/2015/12/17/ -
Virginia Hall DSC Croix de Guerre MBE was the top US spy in France in WW2...incredibly brave and funny, she had a wooden leg she called Cuthbert...she's another icon...this painting is based on her Nazi wanted poster (they gave her the code name Artemis) which I have coopted and placed against a tricolour. My dad knew her in the 50's when she was at the CIA..I remember her coming round for dinner, she was great...I loved Cuthbert too...she got on well with my mum...my mum was a dress designer for Jaeger..they were both VERY stylish..looking forward to the film this year..hope they do her justice...a truly great and genuine hero...loved painting this and remembering her -
Aldous took acid with my dad in 1950's...they discussed Utopianism and cities of The Future...but my dad was drawn into nuclear war planning after the Cuban Missile Crisis and Aldous died on acid in 1963... the same day as JFK...I remember running to a nuclear bunker that day ...the British government thought it was the start of WW3...so did my dad...my dad gave me his signed copy of Aldous's amazing The Doors of Perception; Heaven and Hell for my 18th birthday... -
Ethel was executed in 1953...she was innocent...she was at the eye of the storm of Mccarthyism....an icon...this drawing is taken from a rare photo of her during WW2..I love her look of determination and bravery...and the fact that the profile shot is portent of her looking bloated and stressed in her horrible, pitiless mugshot a decade later...her children have rightly been tireless in their efforts to have her rightfully exonerated...a great shame Obama got close but ultimately didn't have the balls to do it...or stand up to Assad either, for that matter -
Sale!
A ghostly girl swinging high above the world. This is a large oil painting on stretched canvas, no frame needed.
